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WHAT  IS  ART? 


Michelc  Giambono 

St.  Michael  (detail),  Venice  Acadeii.y 


WHAT  IS  ART? 


STUDIES   IN    THE    TECHNIQUE   AND 
CRITICISM    OF   PAINTING 


BY 

JOHN   C.   VAN   DYKE 

w 

AUTHOR    OF  "art  FOR  ART'S  SAKE,"    "tHE  MEANING  OF  PICTURES," 

"studies  in  pictures,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1910 


lUlld^ 


COPYRIGHT,    191O,  BY 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 


Published  November,  19 10 


TO 
BRANDER    MATTHEWS 


241086 


PREFACE 

For  twenty  years  there  has  been  discussion 
of  art  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  connoisseur, 
the  collector,  the  museum  director.  It  seems 
we  are  in  some  danger  of  forgetting  that  there 
is  another  point  of  view — that  of  the  artist,  the 
producer.  We  have  become  so  interested  in 
art  as  a  commodity,  or  a  curiosity,  that  we 
have  possibly  overlooked  the  fact  that  art  may 
be  regarded  merely  as  art,  or  even  as  some- 
thing of  use  and  purpose.  We  are  in  further 
danger  of  forgetting  that  art  in  a  state  must 
come  out  of  the  state  and  represent  its  time 
and  its  people,  and  that  foreign  importations 
or  methods  or  motives  will  not  answer  as  a 
substitute.  The  gathering  of  art-plunder  from 
all  quarters  of  the  globe  may  eventually  make 
us  a  nation  of  experts,  but  never  a  nation  of 
artists,  nor  an  artistic  people.  Still  further  are 
we  in  danger  of  forgetting  that  name  and  price 
and  pedigree  have  nothing  whatever  to  do 


PREFACE 

with  excellence  or  its  absence  in  a  work  of  art. 
The  canvas  that  will  not  stand  without  a  sig- 
nature, a  hall-mark,  or  a  dollar-mark  cannot 
stand  long  by  virtue  of  them. 

These  thoughts,  with  chapters  on  the  consti- 
tution, the  production,  and  the  appreciation  of 
painting,  make  up  the  pages  of  this  little  book. 
They  may  interest  people  who  care  to  read 
about  such  subjects,  possibly  because  they  are 
thoughts  that  often  dissent  from  those  usually 
expressed.  I  have  no  wish,  however,  to  make 
a  virtue  of  this  negation.  It  seems  rather  a 
necessity  that  some  one  should  occasionally 
state  the  other  side  of  the  case.  Nor  have  I 
any  notion  of  claiming  an  added  grace  in  say- 
ing disagreeable  things  about  critics  and  ar- 
chaeologists, many  of  whom  are  my  personal 
friends.  With  so  much  folly  flying  about  us  it 
seems  rather  a  necessity,  again,  that  some  one 
should  occasionally  shoot  at  it.  Destructive 
criticism,  however,  has  not  been  my  object. 
Rather  have  I  tried  to  build  up,  or  at  least  up- 
hold, certain  established  principles,  and  I  trust 
the  reader  of  these  pages  will  recognize  that 
there  is  argument  here,  not  only  for  art  as  art, 
but  for  art  as  an  expression  of  life.  That  and 
its  decorative  and  utilitarian  aim  are  its  sole 


PREFACE 

appeals.  They  never  should  have  been  lost 
sight  of  for  a  moment.  In  the  appreciation  of 
art  the  commercial  phase  of  it  is  irrelevant  and 
wholly  negligible. 

J.  C.  V.  D. 

Rutgers  College, 
October,  1910. 


CONTENTS 


I.    What  Is  Art? 


New  definitions  with  new  generations — ^The  new 
meaning  of  "literature" — What  it  includes — The 
last  phase  of  "art" — The  older  distinctions — 
What  constituted  "literature"  in  the  nineteenth 
century — The  poem,  the  drama,  the  novel — The 
subject  in  painting — Insistence  upon  the  histori- 
cal theme  arid  "the  grand  style" — Raphael  as 
the  model — The  new  view  denying  the  impor- 
tance of  subject — The  extravagance  of  both  views 
— Art  not  so  much  the  thing  said  as  the  manner 
of  saying — Illustrations  in  literature — And  in  art 
— Great  thoughts  or  themes  of  themselves -not 
art — The  subject  not  vitally  important — Henry 
James  and  his  "incident  for  art" — Whistler  £Qid 
Turner — Eclecticism  not  successful — The  theme 
and  scale  mean  less  than  the  seeing  and  doing — 
But  the  subject  not  wholly  negligible — The  mood 
of  mind  arising  from  contemplation — How  the 
theme  is  changed  by  the  mood  with  writers  and 
painters — Technique  and  its  importance — Im- 
possibility of  doing  anything  without  technical 
skill — Poets  and  painters  sown  by  nature,  but 
lacking  the  accomplishment  of  technique — The 
great  artists,  the  world's  great  technicians — Skill 
of  hand  in  the  Renaissance — The  craftsman — 
The  living  quality  of  craftsmanship — This  is  pri- 
marily the  "art"  of  either  book  or  picture. 

II.    The  Use  of  the  Model     .    .      23 

The  lack  of  consciousness  in  a  crowd — The  char- 
acter in  the  unconscious  face — The  faces  of 
Mantegna   and   Bellini   and   Benozzo — Painted 


CONTENTS 


largely  from  memory,  "out  of  the  painter's 
head" — Renaissance  portraiture  and  how  it  was 
done — Leonardo  painting  the  portrait  of  Mona 
Lisa — Working  from  memory  among  the  ancient 
Egyptians — The  modern  and  his  model — Re- 
cording the  fact  before  one — Art  school  teachings 
— Their  limitations — Photographic  portraiture — 
The  tale  of  facts — Portraits  by  Velasquez  and 
Titian  how  done — The  model  in  literature — 
Flaubert  and  Madame  Bovary — Zola  and  Manet 
— The  model  as  they  saw  it — The  obvious  in  the 
model — And  its  recording  by  the  painter — ^The 
peasant  from  memory  in  Millet — Contrasted 
with  Bastien-Lepage  and  the  peasant  in  fact — 
The  Crucifixions  of  Tintoretto  and  Velasquez — 
The  Crucifixion  of  Bonnat — The  model  over- 
realized — Recognition  of  the  model  in  current 
exhibitions — The  types  of  Botticelli,  Perugino, 
Raphael,  Rubens — Realism  upheld  as  a  modern 
virtue — Landscape  as  a  model — The  realist  land- 
scape with  the  Pre-Raphaelites  and  others — The 
great  landscapists  like  Turner  and  Corot  painted 
nature  "out  of  their  head" — Turner's  contempt 
for  facts — The  Fontainebleau  painters — Meth- 
ods of  Monet  and  Impressionism — The  American 
landscapists — Again  the  visual  memory. 

III.    Quality  in  Art 50 

Use  of  the  word — Definitions  by  dealers  and  art- 
ists— Quality  in  national  art — As  an  individual 
attribute — Shown  in  technique  of  painter — Qual- 
ity not  style — Buffon's  "style" — Quality  akin  to 
individuality — Its  resultant  form — Shown  in 
writers — Henry  James,  Swinburne,  Ruskin — 
Shown  in  music — The  quality  of  a  voice — Shown 
in  handwriting — "Character"  in  a  signature — 
The  forged  signature  and  its  lack  of  quality — 
Quality  in  etchings — In  drawings  of  old  masters 
— The  uses  and  purposes  of  line — And  its  qual- 
ity— Mannerisms  of  drawing  are  defects  of  qual- 
ity— Shown  in  pictures — Quality  in  Raphael  and 
Michael  Angelo — In  Terburg,  Van  Dyck,  Anto- 


CONTENTS 

nello  da  Messina,  Holbein — Quality  in  light  and 
shade — Leonardo,  Giorgione,  Correggio — Their 
imitators  and  their  failures — Quality  in  Rem- 
brandt and  its  failure  in  his  pupils — Color  qual- 
ity in  Titian — In  the  great  Venetians — Flesh 
color  of  Titian — And  of  Rubens  and  Van  Dyck 
— The  impossibility  of  reproducing  it  by  pupils 
— The  handling  of  Rubens — Not  possible  to 
forge  it — Of  Velasquez,  Hals,  Vermeer,  Wat- 
teau,  Fragonard — Resultant  individualities  not 
to  be  copied — Only  difiference  between  original 
and  copy  lies  in  quality — Morelli  and  connois- 
seurship — The  Morelli  system  of  attribution — 
Not  reckoning  with  quality — Ease  of  imitating 
mannerisms  of  drawing  lighting,  coloring,  etc. 
— Impossibility  of  imitating  quality — Mr.  Beren- 
son  quoted — His  belief  about  quality — Quality 
easily  recognized — And  capable  of  scientific 
demonstration — Its  neglect  responsible  for  some 
famous  blunders — Dr.  Bode  and  the  "  Leonardo" 
bust — The  Madonna  of  the  Rocks — Morelli's 
discoveries  how  made — Velasquez  in  London — 
The  Rokeby  Venus — Raphael  in  the  Louvre, 
Rembrandt  at  Berlin,  Rubens  at  Antwerp — Dif- 
ference in  the  quality  of  their  attributed  pictures 
— Quality  the  most  distinguished  feature  of  paint- 
ing— Its  value  in  connoisseurship. 

IV.    Art  Criticism 8i 

The  dollar  standard  in  art — Auction  sales  and  the 
interest  therein — Large  prices  fetched  for  pictures 
— Where  lies  the  value  of  the  canvas — The  value 
of  the  artist's  name — Collecting  and  collectors — 
Inferior  art  at  superior  prices — Examples  of  high 
prices — The  value  of  a  picture's  pedigree — De- 
scent from  famous  collections — The  Rokeby  Ve- 
nus and  the  Chigi  Botticelli — The  Duchess  of 
Devonshire  by  Gainsborough — The  Kahn  Hals 
— Critics  and  auction-room  prices — Copies  and 
forgeries,  replicas — Expert  knowledge — Connois- 
seurship and  criticism — Trailing  old  masters — 
Morelli  and   his  system  —  Mannerisms  of  the 


CONTENTS 

masters — Their  part  in  attributions — ^The  inter- 
est of  the  pursuit — The  connoisseur  as  exploiter 
of  pictures — Making  new  art-history — Making 
new  artists — Mr.  Berenson's  "Amico  di  Sandro" 
— Establishing  the  facts  vs.  establishing  theories 
— Connoisseurship  dealing  with  past  art — The 
failure  to  consider  art  as  art — The  historical  side 
dominant — The  aesthetic  side  neglected — Art  a 
matter  of  life  and  use — And  of  decorative  beauty 
— Beautiful  art  in  the  galleries  neglected — Works 
in  London,  Berlin,  Vienna,  Dresden  galleries  un- 
appreciated— Art  for  art's  sake  independent  of 
name,  title,  or  money  value — How  the  connoisseur 
writes  history. 

V.    Art  History 102 

Rewriting  history  every  ten  years — The  personal  ele- 
ment in  it — The  historian  of  art  and  his  preju- 
dices— His  hypotheses  and  assumptions — The 
"life-giving"  imagination  and  what  it  does — 
Methods  of  work  exemplified — Dr.  Waldstein 
and  the  Head  of  a  Lapith — Furtwangler's  Master- 
pieces of  Greek  Sculpture — Reconstructing  the  art 
of  Pheidias — Mr.  Berenson  and  his  "mental  func- 
tioning"— His  establishing  "Amico  di  Sandro" — 
The  evil  of  it — Whole  volumes  written  from 
similar  premises — The  Life  of  Rembrandt  as 
reconstructed — Writing  history  from  a  painter's 
pictures  —  Rembrandt's  mother  —  Rembrandt's 
family — Names  given  to  Berlin  and  Vienna  pict- 
ures— The  value  of  evidence — Also  the  value  of 
common  sense  in  weighing  it — Documents  and 
records  about  pictures — Correggio  and  the  Holy 
Night — The  St.  Bavon  altar-piece  by  the  Van 
Eycks — Rewriting  the  history  of  Flemish  art — 
The  value  of  written  history  about  pictures — 
Pliny  and  Vasari — The  chronicle  and  its  slips — 
Vasari  and  Giotto — Giotto's  sheep  in  the  Arena 
Chapel — Tradition  and  its  value — The  evidence 
of  the  picture  itself — Copies  and  forgers — The 
chances  of  error  in  attributions — Scepticism  about 
Giorg'ione  and  the  Van  Eycks — The  brilliant  hy- 


CONTENTS 

pothesis  and  its  fate — The  materials  for  future 
historians  gathered  by  the  connoisseurs — The 
historian  of  his  own  time — The  interest  in  old  art. 


VI.    Art  Appreciation 127 

The  American  colonies  and  their  self-reliance — 
Their  isolation  and  resourcefulness — Their  work- 
men and  their  artists — The  portraits  of  Harding 
and  the  sculpture  of  Brown — The  training  abroad 
of  Story  and  his  contemporaries — Its  results — The 
Centennial  Exposition  of  1876 — The  first  glimpse 
of  foreign  painting — The  effect  jupon  would-be 
artists — The  departure  of  students  for  Europe — 
Returning  home  with  foreign  methods — The  ex- 
ample set  here  at  home — The  beginning  of  the 
foreign  cult — The  importing  of  foreign  art  and 
furniture — The  desire  for  "antiques" — Our  self- 
reliance  in  all  things,  save  art  and  social  life — 
Our  borrowings  of  art  from  Europe — The  archi- 
tects and  their  reproductions — The  various  styles 
adapted  to  American  use — The  hodge-podge  in 
New  York  City — The  want  of  propriety  and  com- 
mon sense  in  public  buildings — Borrowing  the 
defects  of  the  Colonial  and  other  styles — Our 
country  and  city  houses — The  sky-scraper  and 
the  jeers  at  it — Our  only  original  style — Value 
and  excellence  of  the  sky-scraper — Fulfils  its  pur- 
pose and  is  picturesque — Its  construction  and  its 
new  principle — Art  in  the  house — The  furnishing 
of  our  houses — The  drawing-room  as  a  museum 
of  antiquity — Our  love  of  antiquity — And  our 
talk  about  art — Pursuing  art  in  European  travel 
— The  exclusive  talk  about  foreign  art — And  its 
effect  on  American  art — The  tendency  to  follow 
fashion — Fashion  of  Barbizon  painters,  of  Monet, 
of  Whistler — The  efiFect  on  the  art  schools — 
Training  of  the  pupil — Learning  to  paint  like 
Hals  and  Velasquez — American  art  and  its  quality 
— Needs  no  defence — Importations  and  borrow- 
ings will  not  produce  artists  nor  an  artistic  people 
— Art  springing  from  the  soil. 


CHAPTER  I 

WHAT  IS  ART? 

What  constitutes  art  in  a  book,  a  picture, 
or  a  marble  is  a  question  that  comes  up  with 
each  new  generation.  It  has  been  argued  out 
and  settled  scores  of  times,  but  it  will  not 
stay  settled.  The  last  group  of  artists  to  ar- 
rive possibly  does  something  novel,  some- 
thing that  it  thinks  should  change  definitions 
and  boundary  lines.  It  demands  a  revision 
that  shall  include  its  own  work  and  possibly 
exclude  that  of  its  predecessors.  Here,  for 
example,  is  a  young  crop  of  writers,  just  come 
to  glory,  insisting  that  "literature"  (which  is 
the  literary  equivalent  of  "art")  lies  in  the 
novel,  the  poem,  or  the  drama,  and  that  any 
form  of  writing  that  teaches  or  preaches,  or  has 
any  practical  or  valuable  information  behind 
it,  may  be  history  or  philosophy  or  science, 
but  it  is  not  "literature."  And  here  is  a  new 
band  of  painters  who  will  have  it  that  the 
picture  is  a  "nocturne"  or  a  "symphony" — 
I 


WHAT   IS   ART? 

something  decorative  in  tone  or  color — and 
that  anything  illustrative  or  representative,  or 
in  any  way  informing,  is  outside  the  pale  of 
art.  Some  of  the  band  even  arrive  at  the  vio- 
lent conclusion  that  when  the  brains  are  out, 
when  the  subject  is  reduced  to  a  veiled  shadow, 
when  there  is  a  wrestle  with  form  and  color  to 
say  something  about  nothing,  then  and  then 
only  is  the  real  article  of  art  produced. 

This,  to  the  critic  who  made  elementary 
distinctions  a  few  generations  ago  founded  on 
nineteenth-century  art,  is  not  only  startling 
but  revolutionary.  He  had  it  written  down 
that  literature  had  something  to  do  with  sub- 
stance, with  morals  and  life,  even  with  sub- 
ject and  the  form  in  which  it  was  cast.  The 
great  poems  of  the  world  were  the  long  poems, 
the  ones  that  required  "sustained  effort" — 
for  example,  the  epics  of  Homer  and  Dante. 
Did  not  Byron  make  a  bid  for  immortality 
with  twenty-four  cantos  of  "Don  Juan"  fol- 
lowing Pulci  and  Ariosto?  And  did  not  most 
of  his  contemporaries  burst  into  song,  one 
volume  or  more  long,  recounting  the  advent- 
ures of  Marmions  and  Thalabas  and  Lalla 
Rookhs?  Length,  the  romantic  subject,  and 
the  historical  setting  had  much  to  do  in  those 

2 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

days  with  what  constituted  poetry.  A  lyric 
by  Shelley,  an  ode  by  Keats,  or  a  few  stanzas 
by  Burns  were  accepted  condescendingly  as 
pretty  fragments,  but  not  to  be  ranked  with 
things  done  in  the  grand  style. 

Something  of  the  same  critical  attitude  was 
assumed  toward  the  drama  and  the  novel.  A 
tragedy  was  placed  above  a  melodrama,  a 
melodrama  above  a  comedy,  a  comedy  above 
a  farce.  Anything  that  smacked  of  the  classic 
world  or  that  dealt  with  the  history  of  gods 
or  great  conquerors  was  supposed  to  be  in- 
finitely superior  to  contemporary  incidents. 
The  dust  of  half-forgotten  kings  was  dramatic 
in  itself.  The  novelists,  as  well  as  the  drama- 
tists, scored  successes  by  framing  up  antiquity 
into  three-volume  stories.  The  historical  set- 
ting of  the  tale  with  the  exalted  pose  of  the 
characters  made  the  "  literature."  How  other- 
wise shall  we  account  for  the  vogue  of  the 
bombastic  novel  of  Walter  Scott's  times  and 
after?  Everybody  read  it  for  the  story — the 
thing  said.  No  one  at  that  time  cared  much 
about  how  it  was  said. 

In  that  same  day  painting,  too,  was  sup- 
posed to  consist  largely  in  the  dramatic  in- 
cident or  the  history  portrayed.  Did  not 
3 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

David  in  exile  exhort  his  favorite  pupil,  Gros, 
to  stop  painting  contemporary  subjects  and 
to  search  his  Plutarch  for  a  great  historical 
theme?  Did  he  not  make  Gros  believe  that 
posterity  would  say  of  him:  "This  man  owed 
us  a  'Death  of  Themistocles?'"  Across  the 
Channel  were  Reynolds,  Hoppner,  Lawrence, 
and  their  followers,  worried  to  the  end  of  their 
days  trying  to  produce  the  historical  picture 
in  the  "grand  style"  of  Raphael.  Romney,  as 
an  old  man,  removed  to  his  large  house  on 
Hampstead  Heath  where,  surrounded  by  casts 
from  antique  sculpture,  he  was  to  make  a  final 
effort  at  the  great  historical  picture,  is  a  pa- 
thetic figure.  Art  consisted  then  of  a  twenty- 
foot  canvas  with  half  a  hundred  figures  atti- 
tudinizing for  posterity,  and  half  a  page  of 
history  explanatory  of  their  doings  tacked 
on  the  frames.  Raphael's  "Transfiguration" 
and  Michael  Angelo's  "Last  Judgment" — 
about  the  worst  things  they  ever  painted — 
were  spoken  of  with  bated  breath,  and  Pous- 
sin  with  his  pantheon  of  make-believe  gods 
was  an  acknowledged  master.  The  classic  or 
historic  subject  was  the  thing.  As  for  the  fine 
portraits  of  David  and  Ingres,  they  were  es- 
teemed merely  as  "the  painting  of  buttons 
4 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

and  cocked  hats" — to  quote  David — the  per- 
functory drudgery  done  in  the  studio  to  keep 
the  wolf  from  the  door.  No  one  talked  then 
about  Raphael's  "  Juhus  II"  or  his  "Leo  X." 
The  "School  of  Athens"  and  the  "Heliodo- 
rus"  exemplified  the  grand  style  and  drew  the 
crowd  their  way. 

Now  behold  a  new  point  of  view  and  the 
other  end  of  the  seesaw.  The  bothersome 
younger  set,  disturbing  the  conclusions  of  its 
predecessors,  insists  that  the  historical  or  ro- 
mantic setting  is  great  rubbish,  that  the  grand 
style  is  theatrical  and  untrue,  that  length  or 
breadth  or  size  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  case. 
It  still  believes  that  literature  is  found  only  in 
the  novel,  the  poem,  and  the  drama,  and  it 
has  a  hazy  idea  that  great  painting  requires  a 
more  elastic  field  for  the  imagination  than  the 
portrait  offers;  but  it  talks  much  about 
"character  drawing"  in  the  novel  and  the 
characteristic  and  the  significant  in  the  picture, 
as  though  the  subject  were  somehow  still  a 
fetching  feature.  Its  position  is  quite  op- 
posed to  the  classic  or  romantic  tradition,  but 
is  it  nearer  the  truth  ?  It  is  quite  sure  that  it 
is  right — like  all  the  generations  before  it — 
but  is  one  end  of  the  seesaw  nearer  a  balance 
5 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

than  the  other  end  ?  There  is  evidently  room 
for  some  difference  of  opinion  here;  and  per- 
haps also  an  opportunity  for  making  elemen- 
tary distinctions  on  our  own  account. 

In  the  first  place  art,  strictly  speaking, 
whether  in  the  book,  the  picture,  the  marble, 
or  the  coin,  is  not  the  thing  said  but  rather  the 
manner  of  its  saying.^.  That  which  is  said  may 
be  history  or  mythology  or  pathos  or  patriot- 
ism; it  may  be  a  plot  or  a  passion,  a  sensation 
or  a  sentiment,  and  yet  have  no  art  about  it 
wanting  a  style  in  its  saying.  Even  great 
thoughts — the  thoughts  that  make  us  think — 
are  not  art,  save  by  the  manner  of  their  expres- 
sion. Hegel  and  Darwin  were  thinkers,  but 
their  thoughts  did  not  result  in  literature;  and 
that  not  because  science  and  philosophy  are 
inimical  to  literary  expression,  but  because 
Hegel  and  Darwin  were  nc^t  artists.  Arnold 
wrote  criticism.  Hooker  wrote  ecclesiastical 
polity,  Carlyle  wrote  history,  and  all  of  them 
made  literature  out  of  their  themes.  Why? 
Because  they  handled  them  in  a  literary 
manner;  they  themselves  were  literary  artists, 
creators  of  literature,  notwithstanding  their 
use  of  other  forms  of  expression  than  the  novel 
and  the  poem. 

6 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

Many  are  the  poets  sown  by  nature  yet  want- 
ing the  accomplishment  of  verse.  A  number 
of  people  would  be  disposed  to  place  Walt 
Whitman  with  the  many,  or,  at  least,  deny 
him  high  rank  in  literature.  Would  such  a 
judgment  be  based  upon  his  being  a  common- 
place thinker?  Certainly  not;  but  because  of 
his  being  a  commonplace  artist  in  language. 
Why  is  it  that  Poe  is  so  emphatically  written 
down  a  poet  both  at  home  and  abroad  ?  Are 
his  poems  freighted  with  great  themes  or 
thoughts,  or  are  they  merely  artistically  exe- 
cuted ?  There  is  the  picture  by  Watts  of "  Love 
and  Death,"  with  its  very  impressive  thought, 
allegory,  moral — what  you  will — but  it  is  a 
wretched  piece  of  form  and  color,  and  really 
a  failure  as  a  work  of  art.  In  the  next  room 
to  it,  in  the  National  Gallery  of  British  Art, 
is  the  same  painter's  "Life's  Illusions,"  a 
much  earlier  picture,  which  has  no  apparent 
thought  or  allegory  about  it,  no  idea  that  is 
of  any  importance,  but  it  is  a  superb  work  of 
art,  splendidly  seen,  planned  and  executed. 
Millet's  "Angelus"  and  his  "Man  with  a 
Hoe"  have  both  received  an  undue  share  of 
public  attention,  one  because  of  its  pathetic 
story  and  the  other  because  of  its  supposed  so- 
7 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

cialistic  teaching;  but  the  "Angelus"  is  infe- 
rior art  because  [  it  is  lacking  in  drawing, 
values,  light,  and  color,  while  the  "  Man  with 
a  Hoe"  is  good  art  because  the  figure  is  con- 
vincingly drawn  and  well  placed  in  its  atmos- 
pheric envelope.  The  "Gleaners,"  by  the 
same  painter,  is  better  than  either  of  them. 

Now  the  absence  of  great  thought,  theme,  or 
subject  in  art  is  no  more  of  an  advantage  than 
its  presence.  Whitman  and  Watts  and  Millet 
were  not  handicapped  by  having  a  "message" 
or  an  allegory  or  a  story  to  tell.  Great 
thoughts  of  themselves  will  not  make  art, 
but  they  will  not  prevent  it.  Nor  will  little 
thoughts  or  the  trifling  incident  or  the  meagre 
subject  produce  it.  Mr.  James  has  somewhere 
in  his  "Partial  Portraits"  suggested  that  a  lady 
standing  by  a  table,  with  her  hand  resting 
upon  it,  is  a  sufficient  incident  for  literature  if 
properly  seen  and  artistically  treated.  The 
degree  of  interest,  he  avers,  will  depend  upon 
the  skill  of  the  artist.  Pieter  de  Hooch,  Jan  Ver- 
meer,  Terburg,  Alfred  Stevens,  have  shown  us 
the  lady  in  painting  more  than  once  and  with 
superb  results.  There  is  not  a  particle  of 
doubt  about  her  sufficiency  as  an  incident,  ay, 
even  a  subject.  But  again  the  art  does  not 
8 


WHAT  IS   ART? 

lie  in  the  lady,  but  in  the  skill  of  the  painter. 
Many  masters,  both  old  and  new,  have  tried 
to  make  pictures  of  her  and  failed.  And  many 
again  have  not  confined  themselves  to  such 
simple  materials.  The  limitation  is  not  neces- 
sary. Add  another  figure  by  the  table  or  fire- 
place or  lying  on  a  couch,  put  in  a  room  for 
a  background  and  setting,  call  the  two  Re- 
becca and  Ivanhoe  in  the  castle,  she  at  the 
window  reporting  the  progress  of  the  fight,  and 
can  any  one  imagine  that  the  scene  is  harmed 
either  for  fiction  or  for  painting? 

Mr.  Whistler  would  say  that  it  was  harmed,  ^ 
because  forsooth  he  himself  was  averse  to 
story-telling  with  the  paint  brush.  But  no  one 
has  ever  heard  Botticelli's  "Spring"  or  Car- 
paccio's  St.  Ursula  pictures  or  Paolo  Veronese's 
"Venice  Enthroned"  criticised  because  their 
subjects  handicapped  them  as  art.  In  the 
same  breath  Mr.  Whistler  would  sweep  the 
"foolish  sunset"  out  of  art;  but  Turner,  in  his 
"Ulysses  and  Polyphemus"  and  also  in  the 
"Fighting  Temeraire,"  has  proved  its  right  to 
a  place  there.  Turner,  no  doubt,  would  have 
retorted  in  kind  by  excluding  twilights  on  the 
Thames  with  warehouses  and  towers  in  a  half 
light,  or  nocturnes  with  figures  and  buildings 
9 


WHAT  IS   ART? 

in  muffled  mystery;  but  Whistler  has  made 
beautiful  art  out  of  them.  Each  chooses  what 
pleases  him  best  and  each  perhaps  produces 
from  it  something  artistic.  Neither  the  big- 
ness nor  the  littleness  of  the  theme  is  of  de- 
ciding importance.  The  art  shows  chiefly  in 
the  manner  of  treatment  and  emanates  from 
the  man  behind  the  brush. 

This  is  not  to  argue  that  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence what  you  say  as  long  as  you  say  it  well, 
and  that  the  only;Jhing  worth  looking  for  in 
novel,  poem,  [or  painting  is  the  technique.! 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  to  make  the  distinction 
that  the  thought  or  subject  may  be  as  wide  as 
Tintoretto's  "  Paradise  "  or  as  narrow  as  Mr. 
Whistler's  "Falling  Rocket";  but  the  art  sig- 
nificance of  either  comes  only  with  a  style  of 
seeing  or  doing.  Of  course,  every  one  likes 
at  times  to  imagine  what  great  effect  might 
be  produced  by  a  combination  of  the  exalted 
theme  with  the  master  technician.  Could 
one,  for  instance,  set  Jan  Vermeer  to  painting 
"Love  and  Death"  or  Mr.  James  to  writing 
"Ivanhoe,"  what  masterpieces  might  result! 
Yes;  but  Vermeer  would  probably  do  the 
Love  in  blue  and  the  Death  in  yellow,  and 
his  precise  drawing  and  little  dabs  of  paint 

lO 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

that  look  so  effective  on  the  small  panel  would 
be  wholly  inadequate  for  the  larger  canvas; 
and  Mr.  James  would  probably  analyze  and 
dissect  the  Rebeccas  and  the  Ivanhoes  to 
the  point  of  niggling  the  whole  group.  The 
combination  of  excellences — eclecticism — has 
never  turned  out  the  virile  quality  of  art  in 
either  literature  or  painting. 

The  contention  has  been  definitely  settled, 
in  painting  at  least,  that  the  story,  the  moral, 
the  history,  with  love,  faith,  patriotism,  or  ro- 
mance,! are  not  necessary  to  the  making  of  the 
picture.  Paint  the  figure  piece,  the  genre,  the 
portrait,  the  landscape,  the  still-life — what 
you  please — and  provided  you  see  it,  feel  it, 
handle  it  rightly  the  result  will  be  a  work  of 
art.  There  is  no  distinction  attaching  to  size 
or  subject.  Titian's  portrait  of  the  so-called 
"Duke  of  Norfolk"  is  better  as  art  than  his 
much-praised  but  labored  "Assumption"  at 
Venice;  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  Botticelli's 
portraits  are  not  up  to  his  large  allegory  of 
"Spring."  If  you  would  measure  the  art  of 
a  canvas,  first  discount  the  theme,  the  scale, 
and  all  that.  Diaz  and  Fantin-Latour  could 
reveal  the  finest  kind  of  art  in  a  bunch  of 
roses  or  pinks;  the  Japanese  show  it  in  the 
II 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

trunk  of  a  tree  or  a  trailing  branch  against 
the  sky. 

If  this  contention  will  apply  to  books  as  to 
pictures,  what  becomes  of  the  youthful  obses- 
sion that  literature  is  to  be  found  only  in  the 
novel,  the  poem,  and  the  drama?  Is  litera- 
ture a  quality  of  "the  best  sellers"  or  the  best- 
thumbed  books,  and  do  the  novels  of  Flaubert 
and  Daudet  put  Taine  and  Michelet  out  of 
the  literary  running?  Do  Ibsen  and  Shaw 
who  supply  the  stage  with  dramas  produce 
more  pure  literature  than  did  Cardinal  New- 
man writing  a  sermon  or  a  lecture  or  a  defence 
of  his  life  ?  And  because  we  have  the  very  en- 
joyable poetry  of  Swinburne  or  Stephen  Phil- 
lips shall  we  have  no  more  description  from 
Pierre  Loti  or  criticism  from  Brunetiere? 
What  matters  it  the  kind  of  material  that  falls 
to  the  artist's  hand  ? :  If  he  is  an  artist  he  can 
fashion  it  into  the  form  of  art;  if  he  is  not 
an  artist  he  can  do  as  little  with  one  material 
as  with  another. 

Is  the  subject  then  so  unimportant  that  it 
does  not  enter  into  the  problem  ?  Is  the  thing 
said  so  absolutely  divorced  from  the  manner  of 
saying  that  art  is  wholly  in  the  one  and  not  at 
all  in  the  other  ?.   Hardly.     They  may  merge 

12 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

one  into  another.  Any  one  might  search  his 
Plutarch  and  concoct  a  "Death  of  Themis- 
tocles"  as  he  might  imagine  a  "Cupid  and 
Psyche,"  a  "Cleopatra,"  a  "Hope,"  or  a 
"Spring."  Again,  every  one  is  said  to  have 
the  materials  for  a  novel  in  his  own  life;  and 
almost  every  one  at  some  time  in  his  career  has 
written  poetry  containing  sufficient  subject  and 
sentiment  at  least  to  make  a  lyric  or  a  ballad. 
Why  then  are  there  not  more  results  in  painting 
and  literature?  Is  it  not  because  the  neces- 
sary skill  is  wanting  ?  Yet  skill  does  not  mean 
merely  a  cleverness  of  hand  in  drawing  and 
handling,  in  piling  up  sentences,  in  cutting  up 
language  into  poetic  feet.  The  way  of  seeing 
is  somewhat,  and  besides  there  is  the  mood 
of  mind  produced  by  contemplation  of  the 
subject.  Either  of  them  may  transform  the 
theme  into  something  quite  new  and  strange, 
lend  it  imagination,  mystery,  color,  light, 
splendor. 

Now  unfortunately  for  the  majority  of  us  we 
have  no  artistic  way  of  seeing  things,  no  pecu- 
liar point  of  view  whereby  we  may  transform 
plain  facts  into  finer  fancy.  Possibly  that  ac- 
counts for  our  not  making  novels  out  of  the 
incidents  of  our  lives,  that  our  poems  are  not 
13 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

poetic,  and  that  our  "  Deaths  of  Themistocles," 
our  " Cleopatras,"  and  our  "Hopes"  are  un- 
speakably hopeless  and  commonplace.  Just 
so  with  that  lady  standing  by  the  table  or 
fireplace.  We  have  seen  her  a  thousand 
times,  but  we  never  saw  her  as  in  a  picture- 
frame  or  thought  of  her  as  in  a  novel.  It 
takes  a  Vermeer  or  a  Flaubert  for  that.  How 
wonderful  the  transformation  as  seen  through 
their  eyes!  To  Vermeer  she  is  a  marvel  of 
color  standing  in  a  drift  of  light  and  sur- 
rounded by  a  blue  envelope  of  air — a  figure 
perhaps  as  innately  noble  and  refined  as  a 
duchess  and  yet  as  lacking  in  consciousness  as 
a  school-girl.  To  Flaubert,  or  even  to  Mr. 
James  himself,  she  might  be  an  epitome  of 
womankind,  a  summary  of  the  gayety  or  win- 
someness  of  the  sex,  a  mingling  of  all  the 
passions  or  emotions,  a  something  coldly  in- 
tellectual, flippantly  fanciful,  or  merely  a  curi- 
osity for  artistic  analysis.  The  possibilities 
for  either  the  painter  or  the  novelist  would  be 
practically  unlimited.  The  material  is  there 
to  be  moulded  as  the  artist  may  see  or  feel  or 
desire. 

Again  the  mood  of  mind  means  quite  as 
much  as  the  artistic  vision.     Every  one  has 
14 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

seen  the  sky  of  evening  and  morning — seen  it 
thousands  of  times — but  how  does  it  happen 
that  no  one  ever  saw  it  quite  as  Corot.  Were 
his  eyes  peculiarly  set  in  his  head  that  he 
should  have  such  a  charming  point  of  view? 
Not  exactly.  Tradition  tells  us  that  Corot 
never  spent  much  time  working  directly  from 
nature.  Try  to  locate  his  many  landscapes 
of  ''Lake  Nemi'^  or  "Ville  d'Avray"  and 
you  will  be  disappointed.  He  painted  them 
in  his  studio  and  ''out  of  his  head,"  as  the 
painters  say.  In  other  words,  he  was  paint- 
ing a  mood  of  mind.  After  long  contempla- 
tion of  morning  and  evening  light  he  had 
come  to  see  it  in  his  mind's  eye  as  a  vision 
of  loveliness — a  light  half  real  and  half  ro- 
mantic, but  highly  poetic,  incomparably  beau- 
tiful, serenely  splendid.  Change  from  this 
vision  of  the  dawn  or  the  twilight  to  one  of 
full  sunlight  and  you  have  Turner's  mood  of 
mind.  Change  again  to  the  dusk  of  evening 
and  you  have  Whistler's  mood  of  mind.  In 
each  case  it  was  a  mood,  an  emotion,  a  feeling 
as  well  as  a  manner  of  seeing  and  doing  that 
found  its  way  on  canvas. 

Does   any   one  doubt  that  Turner's  great 
advocate,  Ruskin,  wrote  about  pictures  and 
15 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

sunsets  and  mountains  in  a  similar  frame  of 
mind?  One  can  hardly  say  that  he  wrote 
"Modern  Painters"  "out  of  his  head,"  for  it  is 
full  of  actual  observation,  yet  as  a  whole 
neither  painters  nor  art  critics  can  follow  it. 
It  is  five  volumes  of  passion,  emotion,  feeling 
about  art  and  nature.  Take  it  under  your 
arm  to  the  Turner  room  in  the  National 
Gallery  and  apply  it  to  the  pictures  and  you 
will  be  disappointed:  sit  down  in  your  quiet 
library  and  read  it  and  you  will  be  delighted. 
It  is  not  the  soberest  or  sanest  art  criticism 
in  the  world.  There  is  too  much  mood  and 
frenzy  in  it.  But  because  of  that  very  condi- 
tion of  mind,  what  a  piece  of  literature  it  is! 
It  was  an  entirely  different  mood  that  resulted 
in  "Vanity  Fair";  but,  be  it  remembered, 
it  was  a  mood — a  mental  attitude  toward 
hypocrisy,  a  feeling  about  the  emptiness  of 
social  life,  a  disgust,  perhaps,  at  the  frailty  of 
human  nature  rather  than  any  direct  noting 
of  the  actual  facts.  Thackeray  did  the  book 
out  of  his  head  and  heart  like  Ruskin  and 
Turner  and  Corot.  It  would  have  been  worth- 
less as  literature  had  it  been  done  otherwise. 
It  seems  then  that  an  artistic  way  of  looking 
at  things  is  vitally  necessary  to  both  painting 
i6 


WHAT   IS   ART? 

and  literature,  and  also  that  a  poetic  mood  of 
mind,  a  feeling — the  fine  frenzy  which  sets  the 
poet's  eye  rolling — are  also  required  for  the 
noblest  art.  Is  there  nothing  else?  What 
about  the  skill  of  hand,  to  which  we  have 
referred  in  passing,  the  skill  that  expresses  the 
mood  or  feeling  and  records  the  way  of  see- 
ing? Is  not  that  a  very  important  factor  in 
the  work  of  art  or  literature?  Again  one 
flings  back  to  the  many  poets  sown  by  nature, 
yet  wanting  the  accomplishment  of  verse. 
Every  writer  has  about  him  a  group  of  rela- 
tives and  friends  who  keep  informing  him  what 
wonderful  things  they  have  in  their  heads  if 
only  they  knew  how  to  write.  And  every  one 
knows  the  painter  who  insists  that  he  sees 
things  truly,  but  his  technique  bothers  him 
and  he  cannot  express  what  he  sees.  How  far 
one  may  reach  with  hardly  an  original  idea 
in  his  head,  yet  with  adequate  means  of  ex- 
pression at  hand,  is  suggested  by  the  case  of 
Gray,  the  poet.  He  has  passed  into  a  classic 
because  of  his  skilful  handling  of  language. 
As  Lowell  puts  it :  "  He  has  a  perfect  sense  of 
sound,  and  one  idea  without  which  all  the 
poetic  outfit  (si  ahsit  prudentia)  is  of  little 
avail — that  of  combination  and  arrangement, 
17 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

in  short,  of  art."  It  is  quite  the  fashion  still 
as  it  has  always  been  to  depreciate  the  im- 
portance of  technique,  to  put  it  down  as  the 
mechanical  part  of  the  book  or  the  picture, 
something  subsidiary  to  the  thought;  but 
when,  where,  and  how  in  the  history  of  any 
art  has  there  been  great  work  without  it? 
How  does  it  happen  that  the  world's  great 
writers,  musicians,  painters,  sculptors  are  also 
the  world's  great  craftsmen?  If  it  is  to  be 
believed  that  literature  consists  primarily  in 
the  novel — in  the  subject  rather  than  its  hand- 
ling— what  prevents  those  imaginative  writers 
Mr.  Haggard  and  Miss  Corelli  from  occupy- 
ing seats  in  the  literary  front  row  ?  And,  ad- 
mitting for  the  sake  of  argument  the  first 
premise,  why,  even  as  novelists,  are  they  out- 
ranked by  Mr.  Hardy  and  Mr.  Meredith  ?  In 
our  own  country  the  "best  sellers"  are  written 
by  people  who  pop  up  one  year  and  perhaps 
pop  down  the  next  year,  but  the  best  novels 
are  conceded  to  be  written  by  people  like 
Mr.  Howells.  Why  and  how  does  the  criti- 
cism of  the  day  arrive  at  such  judgments  if  not 
by  an  analysis  of  the  point  of  view,  the  mood 
of  mind,  and  the  workmanship  shown?  Mr. 
Howells  is  a  great  technician  in  literature  and 
i8 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

no  small  part  of  his  genius  consists  in  his  ca- 
pacity for  taking  infinite  pains.  He  labors 
over  paragraphs  and  sentences,  over  scene  and 
setting,  over  impression  and  its  adequate  ex- 
pression as  a  Louis  Seize  goldsmith  over  the 
design  of  a  snuffbox.  The  result  is  the  work 
of  art  in  both  the  novel  and  the  box — the  per- 
fected expression  in  pattern  which  you  cannot 
add  to  or  take  away  from  or  change  in  any 
way  without  injuring  the  effect. 

We  are  inclined  likewise  to  talk  much  of  the 
soulful  playing  of  some  great  pianist  or  the 
fine  feeling  of  some  great  singer;  but  when, 
again,  are  these  unaccompanied  by  mastery  of 
technique?  The  life-long  practice,  and  the 
skill  derived  therefrom,  are  the  essentials  of 
adequate  expression.  A  Jean  de  Reszke  may 
have  been  born  but  a  Jean  de  Reszke  was  also 
made.  The  musician  of  nature,  however  won- 
derful in  gifts,  comes  into  the  world  and  on 
the  stage  only  half  made  up.  He  can  never 
arrive  at  art  save  by  long  years  of  technical 
training.  So  again  while  we  may  rightly  ad- 
mire the  exalted  subjects  and  the  romantic 
poetry  of  Wagner's  operas  we  should  not  over- 
look the  immense  skill  of  the  trained  musician 
— the  writing  of  the  scores  and  the  handling 
of  the  many  motives  by  the  orchestra.  Call 
19 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

Wagner  a  genius  if  you  will,  a  poet,  dramatist, 
musician  born  by  nature  if  you  must;  but 
at  least  it  should  be  conceded  that  he  was  also 
the  great  musical  technician  of  his  day. 

This  argument  may  be  applied  with  even 
greater  force  to  painting  and  sculpture  than 
to  literature  or  music.  The  story  told  of 
Giotto  and  his  drawing  for  the  Pope  that  per- 
fect circle  on  paper  as  a  proof  of  his  artistic 
ability  is  possibly  a  little  fiction  of  Vasari's; 
but  in  the  mouth  of  the  mouthpiece  of  all  the 
Italian  painters,  it  is  eloquent  of  the  prevalent 
belief  as  to  what  constituted  art.  There  was 
no  great  thinking  or  subject  or  theme  there. 
Technical  skill  was  the  only  thing  demon- 
strated, but  that  was  sufficient  not  only  for 
Vasari  but  for  the  Pope  and  his  councillors. 
Given  that,  they  thought  everything  else  might 
follow  as  a  natural  sequence.  Two  hundred 
or  more  years  later,  in  the  same  town  of  Flor- 
ence, Andrea  del  Sarto,  after  doing  some 
superb  frescos  for  the  church  of  the  Servi,  re- 
ceived the  popular  designation  of  "Andrea 
senza  errori" — Andrea  without  faults.  It 
was  his  technical  skill,  not  his  thinking  or 
his  piety,  that  was  without  fault.  That  skill 
was  the  result  of  the  insistence  upon  crafts- 
manship which  had  ruled  in  the  teachings  of 

20 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

the  mediaeval  guilds  and  had  been  handed 
down  from  master  to  pupil  into  the  period  of 
the  Renaissance.  It  was  the  first  and  last 
requirement  of  the  artist  in  any  department 
that  he  should  be  a  skilled  workman. 

What  craftsmen  were  sent  out  of  that  land 
of  Italy  before,  and  through,  and  even  after 
the  Renaissance!  To  mention  such  names  as 
Donatello,  Verrocchio,  Mantegna,  Leonardo, 
Raphael,  Michael  Angelo,  Correggio,  Titian, 
Paolo  Veronese  is  not  only  listing  the  great 
technicians,  but  suggesting  the  whole  history 
of  Italian  art.  Every  one  of  them  was  a  master- 
hand  whether  a  master-mind  or  not.  It  was 
just  so  at  the  north.  The  Van  Eycks  and 
Memlings,  the  Diirers  and  Holbeins,  the 
Rubenses  and  the  Rembrandts,  were  skilled  in 
form,  color,  and  pattern  to  the  last  degree 
known  to  their  time;  they  were  every  one  of 
them  "senza  errori"  in  the  Florentine  sense. 
They  would  not  be  alive  to-day  were  it  not 
for  their  skill.  For  their  subjects  have  prac- 
tically faded  out. 

"  All  passes — art  alone 
Enduring  lasts  to  us, 
The  bust  outlives  the  throne, 
The  coin  Tiberius." 
21 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

Which  is  to  say  that  the  religion,  the  history, 
the  throne,  or  Tiberius — the  original  cause  for 
fashioning  the  coin,  the  marble,  or  the  fresco 
— eventually  passes  on  and  passes  out;  but 
the  style,  the  skill,  the  art  which  fashioned  it 
endures  and  lives  after. 

So  we  may  return  to  the  elementary  dis- 
tinction from  which  we  started  out,  to  insist 
once  more  that  the  thought  in  books  and 
pictures  and  marbles  may  be  a  thing  apart, 
that  the  subject  may  be  a  matter  of  minor  im- 
portance, and  that  neither  of  them  has  much 
artistic  significance  in  itself  but  may  be  made 
significant  by  an  artistic  manner  of  treatment. 
The  way  in  which  both  are  seen,  and  the  depth 
of  emotion  or  feeling  which  they  may  stir  in 
the  artist,  are  properly  a  phase  of  the  art. 
Quite  as  important  as  this  is  the  technical 
skill  in  form  or  color  with  which  the  point  of 
view  is  maintained.  This  latter  is  par  excel- 
lence the  artistic  feature  of  either  the  book  or 
the  picture.  Art  is  primarily  a  matter  of 
doing,  somewhat  a  matter  of  seeing  and  feel- 
ing, and  perhaps  not  at  all  a  matter  of  theme 
or  thinking. 


22 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  USE  OF  THE  MODEL 

One  evening  in  the  early  eighties  a  group  of 
natives  in  an  Italian  town  were  watching  from 
the  sidewalk  a  quartet  of  young  girls  playing 
on  violins  in  a  restaurant.  Girl  musicians  in 
Italy  were  quite  rare  at  that  time  and  are  not 
very  common  even  now.  The  street  audience 
was  following  their  playing  with  deep  interest; 
it  was  not  for  the  moment  conscious  of  itself; 
it  was  off  guard,  oblivious  of  surroundings,  un- 
aware that  any  one  was  looking  at  it.  What 
profound  seriousness  was  in  the  faces !  What 
simple  and  restful  attitudes  the  figures  as- 
sumed! How  easily  but  firmly  the  people 
stood  upon  their  feet!  There  were  men  there 
by  Mantegna  and  Bellini,  youths  by  Ghir- 
landajo,  young  women  by  Ambrogio  da  Predis, 
and  old  women  by  Torbido.  One  might  think 
the  noble  types  of  early  Renaissance  painting 
had  walked  out  of  their  frames  and  were 
standing  there  in  the  street  but  for  the  cos- 
tumes, the  place,  and  the  surroundings. 
23 


WHAT   IS  ART? 

We  sometimes  assume  that  those  Renais- 
sance people  by  Donatello  and  Benozzo  had 
in  their  faces  more  of  what  is  called  "char- 
acter" than  the  people  to-day,  that  civilization 
and  modernism  have  caused  degeneracy  in  the 
type,  and  that  the  Italian  of  our  time  is  only 
a  smirking  semblance  of  his  former  self.  Are 
we  quite  right  about  that  ?  On  the  other  hand 
it  is  sometimes  argued  that  the  old  masters 
when  they  painted  the  dukes  and  warriors  and 
clergy  of  the  Renaissance  put  "character"  into 
them  with  a  paint  brush,  made  them  look 
more  noble  than  they  were  in  reality,  idealized 
the  type  so  to  speak.  But  again  is  that  a  sat- 
isfactory explanation  of  Italian  art  or  artists? 
It  is  conceivable  that  a  modern  painter,  had  he 
a  sufficient  visual  memory,  might  reproduce 
the  faces  in  the  crowd  listening  to  the  music 
and  get  a  similar  quahty  of  "character"  in 
them  to  that  which  is  found  in  Mantegna  or 
Benozzo.  Should  he,  however,  pursue  mod- 
ern methods  and  say  to  any  one  of  the  throng 
on  the  sidewalk — man,  woman,  or  child:  "I 
want  to  paint  you.  Come  to  my  studio  to-mor- 
row at  ten  and  pose  for  me,"  what  would  be 
the  result?  Every  one  knows  that  the  indi- 
vidual would  appear  in  Sunday  garb  with 
24 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

clean  face,  flattened  hair,  and  a  smile,  to  have 
his  picture  taken.  Every  scrap  of  uncon- 
sciousness would  have  vanished  from  him. 
Instead  of  the  strong  type  of  Donatello  or  the 
naive  type  of  Carpaccio  or  the  unconscious 
type  in  the  street  audience,  the  painter  would 
have  before  him  the  smiling  Italian  model,  and 
should  he  paint  the  model  as  seen  he  would 
have  on  canvas  the  pretty-faced  handerchief- 
box  picture  so  prevalent  in  modern  painting. 

It  is  not  probable  that  the  masters  of  the 
Renaissance  period  ever  suffered  the  tyranny 
of  the  model  to  any  such  extent  as  the  moderns. 
They  were  not  continually  hampered  by  the 
material  presence.  That  the  Medici  family 
and  their  friends  sat  for  their  portraits  in 
Botticelli's  ''Adoration  of  the  Magi"  is  unbe- 
lievable; Charles  V  could  not  have  posed  on  a 
rearing  horse  while  Titian  painted  him;  and 
one  might  think  that  popes  and  kings  were  a 
trifle  too  busy  with  affairs  of  church  and 
state  to  give  more  than  one  or  two  perfunctory 
sittings,  even  to  a  Raphael  or  a  Velasquez.  The 
painters  no  doubt  saw  their  sitters  when  and 
how  they  could,  made  their  memoranda  in  the 
shape  of  notes  or  sketches,  and  finally  did  the 
portrait  largely  "out  of  their  head."  Seeing 
25 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

their  sitters  in  this  casual  manner,  oftentimes, 
perhaps,  when  they  were  engaged  in  matters 
of  importance  and  were  quite  forgetful  of 
themselves,  it  can  be  imagined  that  the  un- 
conscious, the  intellectual,  or  the  forceful  in 
them  would  come  to  the  surface  and  be  ap- 
parent in  the  face  and  figure.  It  may  be 
further  imagined  that  this  look,  the  index  of 
the  nobler  man,  would  be  the  feature  making 
the  strongest  lodgment  in  the  painter's  mem- 
ory and  the  very  one  of  all  others  that  he  would 
seek  to  represent  upon  canvas. 

Those  were  days  of  keen  eyes  and  visual 
memory  among  painters,  days  of  doing  things 
swiftly  and  surely;  but  it  must  not  be  inferred 
that  there  was  no  painting  whatever  from  the 
model,  no  sittings  given  to  the  painter. 
Vasari  explicitly  tells  us  of  the  long  sittings 
Leonardo  required  to  make  the  portrait  of 
Mona  Lisa;  how  exactly  and  carefully  it  was 
done;  and  how  the  painter  never  allowed 
Mona  Lisa  to  pose  or  become  dull.  The  nar- 
rative goes  on  to  say  that  "  While  Leonardo  was 
painting  her  portrait,  he  took  the  precaution 
of  keeping  some  one  constantly  near  her  to 
sing  or  play  on  instruments,  or  to  jest  and 
otherwise  amuse  her,  to  the  end  that  she  might 
26 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

continue  cheerful,  and  so  that  her  face  might 
not  exhibit  the  melancholy  expression  often  im- 
parted by  painters  to  the  likenesses  they  take." 
If  for  "melancholy"  we  read  "conscious"  we 
shall  have  an  early  recognition  of  the  danger 
of  too  close  an  adherence  to  the  model.  Even 
the  great  Leonardo  was  afraid  of  it.  Was  it 
this  that  induced  him  to  abandon  the  portrait 
unfinished?  Did  he  feel  the  artificial  in  the 
natural  and  finally  throw  down  his  brushes  in 
despair  or  disgust?  There  is  a  feeling  of  the 
artificial  in  the  lady  even  to  this  day,  let  the 
Paters  read  into  her,  or  out  of  her,  what  they 
may  or  will. 

Such  a  thought  possibly  never  disturbed  the 
Egyptian  sculptors,  who  cut  the  superb  por- 
trait busts  belonging  to  the  early  days  of  the 
empire.  The  busts  were  for  the  tomb  and 
were  likenesses  of  the  deceased,  done  in  all 
probability  after  death  and  from  memory. 
The  living  man  had  he  posed  as  a  model  might 
have  insured  more  exactness  in  the  details,  but 
that  exactness  could  hardly  have  made  them 
more  virile  or  more  pronounced  in  character. 
Just  so  with  the  portraits  on  wooden  panels 
taken  from  the  wrappings  of  the  mummies 
found  in  the  Fayoum  in  1884.  They  are 
27 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

coarse,  degenerate  work  done  in  wax  after  the 
Greek  or  Roman  method,  and  beyond  ques- 
tion done  from  memory;  but  what  a  live  look 
they  have!  How  full  of  weird  f orcef ulness ! 
One  might  think  these  were  the  dead  come  to 
life  again  with  the  sad  seriousness  of  the  nether 
world  still  in  their  faces. 

But  the  dead  are  not  painted  in  these  mod- 
ern times — except  from  a  photograph.  The 
man  or  his  counterfeit  presentment  must  be 
there  or  the  painter  is  helpless.  He  cannot 
work  without  the  model;  he  has  not  the  visual 
memory  to  do  the  portrait  "out  of  his  head." 
A  memory  of  the  eye  was  never  taught  him. 
In  the  art  classes,  when  he  was  a  student,  there 
was  an  ever-present  model  on  the  stand.  He 
was  told  to  look  at  the  model  for  every  line 
of  light  or  shade,  and  to  follow  it  exactly; 
he  was  forbidden  to  "fake"  things,  as  they 
called  it,  or  to  do  anything  from  recollection. 
When  one  uses  a  crutch  for  a  bad  leg  or  a  bad 
memory  it  tides  one  over  a  present  circum- 
stance, but  it  does  not  help  either  the  leg  or 
the  memory.  They  both  grow  flabby  and  unre- 
liable. The  painter  who  has  been  raised  on  the 
model  is  seldom  wholly  weaned  from  it.  He 
can  do  nothing,  not  even  a  drapery  or  a  back- 
28 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

ground,  without  it.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Sar- 
gent in  painting  a  certain  portrait,  some 
years  ago,  needed  a  white  marble  column  in 
his  picture.  Where  he  was  painting  at  the 
time  there  were  no  marble  columns,  but  at  the 
suggestion  of  a  friend  he  had  a  carpenter 
make  a  wooden  one  and  give  it  a  coat  of  white 
paint.  This  the  painter  set  up  and  painted 
with  the  result  that  in  the  picture  it  looked, 
not  like  marble,  but  like  a  wooden  column 
painted  white.  He  had  realized  the  model  to 
the  last  detail  of  appearance.  He  could  not 
get  away  from  it.  The  tale  as  told  was 
meant  to  illustrate  the  painter's  uncompro- 
mising veracity;  but  does  it  not  also  illustrate 
a  limitation? 

When  realistic  portraiture  is  in  the  air  how 
can  anything  but  an  official  report  be  expected 
upon  the  canvas?  The  omnipresence  of  the 
facts  crowds  out  the  nobler  aspect  of  the  sitter 
and  forbids  the  finer  spirit  of  art  itself.  The 
externals  only  are  realized.  The  greater  the 
realization  of  these  the  more  "jumpy**  is  the 
likeness.  This  usually  calls  for  applause. 
After  twenty  sittings,  perhaps,  with  every 
wrinkle  recorded  and  every  hair  drawn  out, 
the  figure  fairly  talks  or  walks  out  of  the 
29 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

canvas.  It  is  what  is  called  "  a  speaking  like- 
ness.'* Sometimes  it  cannot  be  made  by  ordi- 
nary methods  to  speak  fast  enough  for  some  of 
the  artists  who  make  periodic  visits  to  America 
to  paint  our  fashionable  folk,  and  so  they  resort 
to  a  trick  of  the  camera.  A  snap  shot  is  taken 
of  the  sitter — of  course  merely  as  an  aid  at  odd 
moments  to  the  painter.  It  is  enlarged  and 
thrown  upon  a  sensitized  canvas — usually 
without  the  sitter's  knowledge.  Over  this  en- 
larged photograph  the  artist  lays  his  colors  and 
produces  the  colored  photograph  on  canvas. 
The  likeness  is  now  more  "wonderful"  than 
ever.     The  applause  is  louder  and  longer. 

But  what  have  we  from  either  the  camera  or 
the  model-bound  painter  but  a  tale  of  facts? 
At  best  the  sitter  is  only  so  much  still-life 
painted  like  a  dead  fish  on  a  platter  or  a  brass 
bucket  on  the  floor.  The  properties  are  "ar- 
ranged" in  the  studio— usually  for  the  fetching 
quality  of  costume  if  the  sitter  is  a  woman — 
and  everything  is  painted  just  as  it  is  seen, 
the  face  counting  for  little  more  than  a  flounce, 
the  animate  for  little  more  than  the  inanimate. 
The  pose  is,  of  course,  obvious  in  the  sitter 
and  equally  apparent  in  the  picture.  The 
peculiar  way  of  seeing,  which  is  so  necessary 
30 


THE  USE  OF  THE  MODEL 

to  art,  is  conspicuously  absent;  and  the  mood 
of  mind  out  of  which  things  poetic  spring 
into  being,  together  with  imagination,  feeling, 
emotion,  are  not  even  suggested.  We  have 
the  model;  be  it  fish,  flesh,  or  flounce,  with  all 
the  glitter  or  smirk  or  sheen  of  it;  but  nothing 
more.  This  is  craftsmanship  pure  and  sim- 
ple and  not  the  best  quality  of  it  at  that.  It 
is  an  attempt  to  outdo  the  camera  in  presenting 
facts. 

Things  are  in  the  saddle  and  ride  mankind. 
How  often  one  is  dragged  out  of  his  happy 
home  to  see  the  work  of  the  man  who  realizes 
the  model!  Your  friends  declare  him  a  won- 
der, and  talk  about  truth  and  reality  and  the 
everlasting  verities;  but  when  you  see  the 
portrait  before  you  there  once  more  is  the 
same  old  catalogue  of  items.  How  weary  one 
becomes  of  all  that  literalness  and  minutiae, 
that  over-modelled  face  that  threatens  to  fall 
out  of  the  picture-frame,  that  over-realized 
figure  crowded  forward  into  the  foot-lights, 
that  indurated  background  that  not  even  an 
earthquake  could  crackle!  One  goes  back  to 
a  portrait  of  Philip,  by  Velasquez,  done  per- 
haps from  memory  for  the  tenth  time,  to  get 
the  large  truths  of  air  and  light,  of  man  and 
31 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

costume,  not  to  say  the  dignity  of  the  king 
and  the  sobriety  of  the  monarch.  Or  to 
Titian.  At  the  foot  of  the  canvas  in  the  cele- 
brated Madonna  of  the  Frari  are  the  members 
of  the  Pesaro  family,  kneeling,  while  St.  Peter 
intercedes  for  them  with  the  Madonna,  every 
one  of  the  portraits,  again  beyond  a  doubt, 
done  from  memory.  But  what  splendid  types 
they  are,  how  free  from  trivialities,  how  frank 
and  simple  and  dignified!  Nothing  could  be 
further  removed  than  the  thought  of  the 
model.  One  seems  to  feel  that  this  is  the  way 
the  scene  actually  occurred;  and  that  Titian, 
unseen  himself,  looked  in  upon  the  group  and 
afterward  recorded  the  nobility  of  the  presence. 
But  the  model  is  not  the  bete  noire  solely  of 
the  portrait.  It  invades  almost  every  depart- 
ment of  art  and  creates  vulgarity  wherever  it 
goes.  The  final  result  may  not  be  failure  and 
yet  still  be  disappointing.  It  can  hardly  be 
thought  that  the  minuteness  with  which  the 
model  is  delineated  and  the  facts  are  insisted 
upon  in  *' Madame  Bovary'^  is  the  secret  of  the 
book's  success.  Flaubert  succeeded,  in  spite 
of  all  that,  by  and  through  the  excellence  of 
his  workmanship.  Courbet's  "Demoiselles 
de  Village,"  to  take  a  pictorial  parallel  of  the 
32 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

time,  is  a  picture  of  practically  the  same  kind 
of  people  as  those  in  the  novel;  but  again  the 
picture  is  redeemed  by  Courbet's  masterful 
handling.  It  is  quite  the  same  thing  with 
Zola's  characters.  You  always  feel  [their  in- 
trusive existence.  He  keeps  pushing  them  at 
you.  As  he  sees  them  they  have  no  height  or 
depth  or  thickness  about  them;  they  are  the 
rag-tag  and  the  bobtail  of  humanity  and  have 
not  even  the  quality  of  uniqueness  or  singu- 
larity. What  made  him  delineate  such  peo- 
ple? He  never  could  have  loved  them,  or 
caressed  them,  or  grown  emotional  over  them; 
it  is  not  conceivable  that  he  was  ever  so  much 
as  cast  into  a  mood  of  mind  about  them.  He 
was  merely  curious  about  them  artistically, 
and  put  them  on  the  model's  stand  for  analy- 
sis, dissection,  exploitation.  He  drew  them 
with  his  sharp  little  pencil,  put  down  every- 
thing petty  about  them,  and  overlooked  every- 
thing that  might  be  large  or  distinguished. 
What  is  the  result  ?  The  model  on  the  stand, 
being  dressed  and  posed  and  made  to  talk  to 
order  in  almost  every  page  of  the  Rougon- 
Macquart  series.  Yes;  the  books  are  inter- 
esting, forceful,  even  powerful,  but  despite 
rather  than  by  virtue  of  the  models. 
33 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

Perhaps  the  conception  of  human  stolidity 
and  stupidity  in  Parisian  low  life  is  better 
shown  in  Manet,  the  friend  of  Zola,  than  else- 
where in  painting.  Every  one  who  is  interested 
in  the  technical  side  of  art  knows  that  Manet 
was  something  of  a  genius  with  the  brush,  quite 
a  perfect  painter  in  a  literal  sense,  a  man  whose 
medium  of  expression  was  peculiarly  pigment. 
Not  since  the  days  of  Velasquez  has  any  one 
gone  beyond  him  in  pure  painting.  In  addi- 
tion to  his  wonderful  fingers  he  had  eyes  that 
saw  new  truths  in  nature,  and  in  that  respect 
he  was  something  of  a  discoverer.  But  there 
the  tale  ended.  Not  even  his  most  ardent  ad- 
mirers ever  loved  the  people  of  his  canvas  or 
cared  for  what  they  represented.  He  was  al- 
ways painting  and  realizing  the  model  though 
he  apparently  decried  it  in  favor  of  the  "im- 
pression." As  a  matter  of  fact  his  "impres- 
sion" was  a  newer  and  stronger  realization 
of  the  model  than  had  been  given  by  any  of 
the  reaHsts  before  him.  It  was  so  insistent 
that  you  cannot  forget  it  for  a  moment.  The 
model  is  always  there — the  same  stupid  creat- 
ure that  Zola  used.  The  painter  had  no 
more  emotion  or  love  or  feeling  for  those  he 
painted  than  the  novelist.  They  were  mod- 
34 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

els  from  the  Latin  Quarter,  easily  obtainable; 
and  for  Manet's  purposes  quite  as  good  mate- 
rials as  a  band  of  angels  straight  from  heaven. 
Paint  them  as  charmingly  as  he  could  and  did, 
he  never  painted  anything  but  the  bare  ex- 
ternal facts.  And  those  facts  are  the  very 
things  continually  flung  in  our  face  by  the  skill 
and  excellence  of  the  artist.  The  "  Bon  Bock," 
*'01ympe,"  the  *' Dejeuner  sur  I'herbe,"  the 
"  Folies-Bergere "  keep  dragging  us  back  to 
the  commonplace  obviousness  of  the  model — 
always  the  model. 

Now  we  are  not  quarrelling  with  Flaubert 
or  Zola  or  Manet  because  of  their  choice  of 
subject.  If  it  is  said  that  the  characters  are 
commonplace  and  stupid  people  from  Parisian 
or  provincial  low  life,  we  do  not  mean  that  the 
people  themselves  are  necessarily  that,  but  that 
the  novelist  and  the  painter  have  made  them 
stupid  by  the  precision  of  the  drawing,  and 
the  everlasting  adherence  to  the  facts.  They 
have  multiplied  observation  and  catalogued 
item  upon  item  until  any  larger  significance  that 
might  attach  to  either  has  been  lost.  Millet  so 
far  as  reality  is  concerned  had  a  heavier  and  a 
stupider  person  to  deal  with  in  the  peasant  than 
Manet  in  the  boulevardier;  but  how  does  it 
35 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

happen  that  his  types  are  not  stupid  on  canvas  ? 
Millet  was  born  and  reared  among  the  peasantry 
and  knew  them  well.  From  boyhood  he  had 
seen  the  swinging  figure  of  the  sower,  the  strain- 
ing form  of  the  spader,  the  bending  body  of  the 
gleaner.  He  had  seen  the  workmen  at  noon- 
day in  the  fields,  he  had  seen  them  at  sunset 
against  the  sky,  he  had  known  them  in  all 
times  and  seasons.  In  addition  he  had  long 
years  to  think  about  them,  to  grow  sad  or 
glad  about  them,  to  become  indignant  over 
their  neglect  in  art,  or  possibly  protestant  about 
the  hardship  of  their  lot  among  the  masses. 
At  any  rate  he  had  a  feeling  for  and  about  his 
own  kind,  and  while  in  Paris  he  had  a  chance 
to  see  them  in  the  fields  through  the  haze  of 
distance  and  gain  a  peculiar  point  of  view. 
When  finally  he  went  back  to  Barbizon  to 
paint  the  peasant  he  did  not  put  him  on  the 
stand  in  his  studio  and  tell  him  to  pose.  On 
the  contrary  he  studied  him  anew  in  the  fields 
where  he  worked,  and  then  went  back  to  his 
studio  and  painted  him  out  of  his  head.  He 
worked  from  visual  memory,  not  from  the 
actual  model  before  him.  With  what  results 
in  art  every  one  knows. 
The  difference  between  the  "Bon  Bock" 
36 


THE   USE   OF   THE   MODEL 

and  "The  Sower"  is  not  so  much  the  differ- 
ence between  city  and  country  life  in  France 
as  between  the  methods  of  Manet  and  Millet. 
One  clung  to  the  actual  model  and  the  other 
clung  to  a  point  of  view  about  the  model. 
But  lest  there  be  any  misgiving  about  this 
difference,  let  us  take  the  same  subject,  the 
peasant,  in  the  hands  of  those  who  came  after 
Millet.  There  is  Bastien-Lepage,  another 
peasant  born,  and  with  a  more  exact  tech- 
nique, gained  from  a  severer  training  in  Paris, 
than  Millet  possessed.  Why  did  he  never 
reach  up  so  high  as  his  predecessor  ?  A  differ- 
ent order  of  mind,  a  different  temperament,  it 
may  be  said;  but  was  not  the  concrete  working 
of  that  mind  or  temperament  shown  in  the  use 
of  the  model  ?  Bastien  painted  in  his  garden, 
out-of-doors,  and  in  that  respect  got  away  from 
the  artificial  lighting  and  surroundings  of  the 
studio;  but  he  placed  the  actual  peasant  before 
him  in  the  garden,  posed  him,  drew  him,  real- 
ized him  to  the  last  button  and  shoestring. 
You  cannot  see  poetry  or  charm  or  motion 
about  him  for  the  rain  of  facts.  He  is  only  so 
much  still-life.  Was  it  the  recognition  of  this 
that  led  Degas  to  say  that  Bastien  was  "the 
Bouguereau  of  the  new  movement"?  The 
37 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

remark  is  not  too  exact  in  its  comparison. 
Bouguereau  painted  an  academic  tradition 
and  Bastien  a  human  specimen,  but  both  fell 
down  through  too  much  devotion  to  the 
externals. 

That  was  the  failing  of  all  the  other  followers 
of  Millet,  the  L'hermittes,  the  Julien  Dupres, 
the  Ridgway  Knights.  They  caught  at  the 
form  and  missed  the  spirit.  David  in  placing 
the  gods  and  heroes  of  Greece  and  Rome  upon 
canvas  made  the  same  mistake.  Art  does  not 
lie  in  the  model,  be  it  boulevardier,  peasant,  or 
Greek  god.  It  lies  in  the  way  you  see  and  feel 
and  paint.  The  old  masters,  from  Fra  An- 
gelico  to  Tintoretto,  Rubens,  and  Velasquez, 
painted  crucifixions  out  of  their  head  and  gave 
to  a  horrible  subject  a  loftiness,  a  dignity,  a 
compelling  grandeur.  They  made  people  be- 
lieve in  a  Christ  hanging  and  dying  upon  the 
cross.  The  picture  was  inspiring,  uplifting, 
exalting.  But  a  modern  came  along  to  show 
how  much  truer  and  better  that  theme  could 
be  handled  at  the  present  day.  Bonnat  had 
the  dead  body  of  a  criminal  hung  on  a  cross 
in  the  court-yard  of  the  School  of  Medicine  in 
Paris,  painted  it  precisely  as  it  was  before  him, 
and  called  the  picture  ''  Christ  on  the  Cross." 
38 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

But  what  was  the  ultimate  result  as  art  ?  The 
figure  never  led  any  one  for  a  moment  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  the  dead  Saviour.  It  was 
only  too  apparent  in  the  tortured  body  that  it 
was  the  dead  criminal.  He  had  followed  the 
model  so  closely  that  it  was  not  possible  to 
believe  it  anything  but  the  model.  All  this 
had  been  demonstrated  years  before  in  Flor- 
ence when  Fra  Bartolommeo  painted  a  nude 
St.  Sebastian  for  the  convent  of  San  Marco. 
He  painted  it  so  true  to  the  model  that  people 
forgot  the  suffering  saint  in  admiring  the  fine 
body;  and  we  are  told  the  picture,  for  that 
reason,  had  to  be  removed  from  the  convent. 
Fra  Bartolommeo  had  over-realized  his  model. 
How  much  of  that  we  see  in  the  current  ex- 
hibitions. After  a  few  years  of  gallery-going 
we  even  come  to  know  the  people  who  pose 
for  the  painters.  Here,  for  instance,  is  an  old 
man  with  a  shock  of  hair  and  sad  eyes  who  is 
said  to  have  a  "fine  head"  and  to  be  a  good 
model  because  he  sits  restfully.  Last  year  he 
appeared  .with  a  stuffed  lion  by  his  side  and 
was  called  "St.  Jerome";  this  year  he  is  cov- 
ered with  armor  and  is  said  to  be  "  The  Black 
Prince";  next  year  he  will  be  in  blue  jeans  as 
a  worker  in  a  rolling-mill,  or  wearing  flannels 
39 


WHAT   IS   ART? 

at  the  sea-shore  as  an  old  lover  in  the  train  of 
Miss  Puff-Puff.  But  we  never  fail  to  recog- 
nize him  under  each  and  every  name.  The 
pretty  girl  with  the  empty  head,  how  well  we 
know  her,  too!  She  cannot  make  us  believe 
that  her  superior  air  is  not  assumed  nor  can 
we  be  deceived  by  the  transparent  title  of  "  A 
Lady  with  a  Fan.''  She  does  not  own  either 
the  ball  dress  or  the  fan.  She  never  lived  in 
those  luxurious  apartments.  She  is  not  to 
that  manner  born.  Lady  she  may  be,  though 
the  picture  does  not  say  so;  model  she  cer- 
tainly is  however  hard  the  picture  may  try  to 
say  she  is  not. 

But  some  one  may  say:  "Did  not  your  old 
masters  do  the  same  thing?  Was  not  Botti- 
celli always  painting  La  Bella  Simonetta,  and 
Raphael  the  Fornarina,  and  Perugino  that 
pretty  face?  Do  you  not  always  recognize 
the  model  in  Rubens?"  The  answer  is  yes — 
and  no.  They  painted  an  abstraction,  a  type 
of  their  own  creation  and  variation.  More- 
over, they  painted  it  largely  from  memory,  and 
got  not  its  petty  detail,  but  its  nobler  qualities. 
You  recognize  the  type,  to  be  sure,  but  is  the 
model  obtrusively  apparent  ?  Besides,  to  side- 
step the  question  for  a  moment,  who,  save  the 
40 


THE  USE   OF  THE   MODEL 

tourist,  ever  thought  the  pretty  face  of  either 
Perugino  or  Raphael  a  fetching  feature? 
Michael  Angelo  sneered  at  it.  It  was  not  a 
virtue  but  a  weakness  of  their  art.  The  old 
masters  went  lame  at  times  and  even  Raphael 
had  his  little  limp.  As  for  Rubens,  his  art 
might  have  been  the  better  for  a  less  deter- 
mined adherence  to  his  Flemish  type.  But 
neither  he  nor  Raphael  nor  Perugino  nor 
Botticelli  makes  you  think  of  his  type  as  a 
model.  It  is  too  abstract  for  that;  and  yet 
perhaps  at  times  concrete  enough  to  be 
annoying. 

But  again  let  it  be  said  that  it  is  not  the  sub- 
ject or  the  model  we  are  quarrelling  with,  but 
rather  the  literal  manner  in  which  the  painter 
sees  and  paints  it.  It  is  not  that  models— male 
and  female  after  their  kind— belong  to  the 
lower  stratum  of  society,  and  that  something 
of  social  cheapness  creeps  into  the  St.  Jerome- 
Lady  with  a  Fan  picture;  but  rather  that 
they  are  made  cheap  by  the  commonplace  view 
and  the  dull  hammering  upon  facts  of  the 
painter.  The  same  thing  occurs  in  landscape 
painting  with  nature  for  a  model,  whom  no 
one  could  accuse  of  being  commonplace — 
except  perhaps  Whistler.  Nature  has  been 
41 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

made  vulgar  enough  by  those  who  have  in- 
sisted upon  realizing  all  her  obvious  features 
and  petty  facts.  The  painter  out-of-doors 
who  sets  up  an  easel  in  the  fields  or  woods  and 
paints  there  until  his  pigments  freeze  is  quite 
in  the  modern  spirit.  He  takes  great  credit 
for  his  realism  and  devotion  to  facts,  and  anni- 
hilates the  critic  who  may  cavil  at  his  picture 
by  telling  him  that  was  exactly  the  way  he 
saw  the  scene  and  that  the  picture  is  precisely 
true  in  every  respect.  Possibly  that  is  the 
trouble  with  it;  it  is  too  true — so  true,  indeed, 
that  there  is  no  room  for  feeling  or  imagina- 
tion about  it.  The  facts  convince  you  by 
overwhelming  you,  by  knocking  you  down. 

There  has  possibly  never  been  a  time  in  the 
history  of  landscape  painting  when  truth  was 
not  relied  upon  as  a  substitute  for  beauty,  when 
the  landscape  model  was  not  invoked  to  prove 
the  veracity  of  the  picture.  All  the  biogra- 
phies of  the  landscapists  tell  us  how  each  par- 
ticular genius  stickled  for  truth,  threw  art 
teachings  to  the  winds,  and  "went  directly  to 
nature."  As  though  that  were  the  sum  of  all 
the  virtues  in  art.  Gainsborough,  for  instance, 
cast  aside  tradition  to  paint  what  he  saw  in 
Suffolk  woodlands,  and  Constable  when  asked 
42 


THE  USE   OF  THE  MODEL 

where  he  put  his  brown  tree  said  he  never 
used  one.  These  are  good  tales  wherewith  to 
lard  a  biography,  but  unfortunately  the  pict- 
ures contradict  them.  Gainsborough  "went 
directly  to  nature"  after  he  found  out  how 
Ruysdael  and  Watteau  painted  landscapes; 
and  Constable,  when  it  served  his  purpose,  as 
in  the  celebrated  "Valley  Farm,"  used  the 
brown  tree  and  made  the  traditional  brown- 
fiddle  picture.  They  took  nature  with  several 
grains  of  art-tradition  which  possibly  accounts 
for  the  fine  quality  of  some  of  their  work. 
When  Constable  really  painted  the  Stour  and 
the  surrounding  country  from  the  model  he 
grew  prosaic  and  dull.  As  for^  Ruysdael,  he 
never  literally  followed  the  model,  but  in  its 
place  accepted  art-tradition  filtered  through 
Claude  and  Poussin.  He  produced  a  con- 
ventionalized landscape  which,  like  Greek 
sculpture,  had  not  too  much  exact  nature  back 
of  it  but  a  great  deal  of  fine  decorative  art. 

The  realistic  landscape  has,  however,  been 
more  prevalent  in  the  last  hundred  years  than 
ever  before.  The  scientific  spirit  has  set  art 
circles  buzzing  until  painters  have  at  last  come 
to  believe  that  truth  is  the  aim  of  everything — 
poetry,  music,  and  painting  included.  Strange- 
43 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

ly  enough,  the  insistence  is  not  so  much  upon 
the  large  and  universal  truths  of  nature  as  the 
small  and  accidental  ones.  The  painter  seizes 
on  the  leaf,  the  flower,  the  pebble,  and  by  mul- 
tiplying them  indefinitely  seeks  to  give  the 
truth  of  the  forest,  the  meadow,  the  sea-shore. 
Charles  de  Laberge  and  Cabat  in  France  were 
minute  enough  in  their  imitations,  but  when 
Preraphaelitism  broke  out  in  England  and 
the  brotherhood  began  painting  landscapes 
following  those  of  Fra  Angelico  and  Botticelli, 
then  nature  became  merely  a  flat  sheet  of 
flickers  and  spots  and  particles.  The  Holman 
Hunts,  the  Rossettis,  and  the  Madox-Browns 
never  attained  any  truth  of  nature  as  a  whole; 
but  they  reproduced  enough  surface  detail 
from  the  model  to  make  not  only  their  figures 
but  their  landscapes  a  weariness  to  the  eye. 
In  vain  the  ardent  advocacy  of  Mr.  Ruskin. 
His  long-drawn  cry  of  truth  simply  sent  the 
second  crop  of  Preraphaelites  to  error.  The 
landscapes  of  the  Seddons,  the  Lewises,  and 
the  Bretts  are  eloquent  of  what  both  nature 
and  art  are  not.  Too  close  adherence  to  the 
supposed  facts  of  the  model  ruined  them. 
That  this  landscape  represented  a  side  hill 
near  Jerusalem  or  that  another  one  showed  a 
44 


THE   USE   OF  THE   MODEL 

view  of  Gethsemane — the  old  reliance  upon 
subject  for  interest — did  not  and  could  not 
retrieve  the  failure. 

Standing  apart  from  the  scientific  trend, 
apart  from  the  long  line  of  landscape  painters 
who  believed  in  the  doctrine  of  truth,  a  few 
great  men  hold  prominent  place  partly  because 
of  their  dissent.  Turner  is  one  of  the  most 
marked.  In  spite  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  five-volume 
exposition  of  Turner  as  "the  only  man"  who 
ever  gave  the  truth  of  leaf  or  branch  or 
mountain  wall,  the  fact  remains  that  he  is 
about  the  only  Englishman  in  art  who  deliber- 
ately made  ducks  and  drakes  of  truth  when  it 
suited  his  purpose.  He  knew  the  truths  of 
nature  perhaps  more  thoroughly  than  Con- 
stable or  any  other  landscape  painter  before 
him;  but  he  deliberately  distorted  them,  when 
it  pleased  him,  to  make  an  effective  composi- 
tion. This  does  not  mean  his  liberties  taken 
with  topography — the  pushing  about  of  cam- 
panili  at  Venice  or  castles  and  towers  at 
Heidelberg — but  the  falsification  of  color, 
light,  shadow,  drawing,  for  effect.  Any  one  of 
his  pictures  in  the  National  Gallery — even  the 
"Frosty  Morning,"  which  every  Englishman 
refers  to  for  its  truth — will  be  found  more  or 
45 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

less  false  in  shadows,  lighting,  values.  He  was 
a  dreamer  of  dreams  not  a  botanist  nor  an 
architect,  a  painter  of  visions  not  a  recorder 
of  happenings.  He  laughed  in  his  sleeve  at 
Ruskin;  and,  though  he  sketched  as  he  trav- 
elled and  knew  nature  very  well,  he  rather 
laughed  at  her  also.  "Pictures!"  he  ex- 
claimed. "  Give  me  a  canvas,  colors,  a  room 
to  work  in  with  a  door  that  will  lock,  and  it 
is  not  difficult  to  paint  pictures."  There  the 
artist  speaks.  He  discarded  the  actual  model 
and  worked  from  visual  memory  in  the  studio. 
He  carried  his  nature  in  his  mind  and  painted 
her  out  of  his  head. 

Corot  did  the  same  thing.  As  a  young  man 
following  his  master,  Bertin,  he  drew  in  a  small 
way  and  detailed  everything  with  the  model 
before  him;  but  later  in  life  he  forswore  all 
that,  locked  the  door  of  his  studio,  and  painted 
from  memory.  Rousseau  and  his  Fontaine- 
bleau  contemporaries  went  through  a  similar 
experience  and  finally  emerged  with  a  freer, 
broader  landscape,  founded  to  be  sure  on  a 
study  of  nature,  well  grounded  in  fact;  but 
not  the  crude  transcript  of  the  original  so 
much  as  its  impression  mellowed  by  memory 
and  distance.  The  impressionists  in  land- 
46 


THE  USE   OF  THE   MODEL 

scape  who  came  after  and  claimed  Turner, 
Corot,  and  the  Fontainebleau  men  as  their 
artistic  forebears  were  in  reality  quite  opposed 
to  them  in  almost  every  way.  They  prided 
themselves  on  a  closer  adherence  to  the  model 
than  any  of  their  predecessors,  and  called  in 
science  to  confirm  the  truth  of  their  prismatic 
air,  their  light,  and  their  colored  shadows. 
The  work  was  really  more  remarkable  for  its 
development  of  new  truths  of  nature  and  new 
technical  methods  than  anything  else.  The 
hay-stacks  and  seas  and  cathedral  towers  of 
Monet  were  startling  for  their  novelty  rather 
than  their  beauty.  People  were  amazed  that 
sunlight  could  be  so  bright,  that  shadows  were 
so  high-keyed  in  color,  that  atmosphere  was  so 
blue,  that  the  face  of  nature  was  so  fickle  and 
fleeting.  It  is  only  in  his  later  years  that 
Monet  seems  to  have  partially  forsaken  the 
model.  The  result  is  such  superb  canvases  as 
those  of  the  Thames  series  or  the  still  later 
lily-pond  pictures,  so  fine  in  decorative  quality. 
In  America,  to  drive  illustration  into  the  last 
ditch,  all  of  our  famous  landscapists  in  their 
better  canvases  have  worked  largely  from  vis- 
ual memory.  There  is  no  doubt  that  men  like 
Inness  and  Wyant  and  Homer  Martin  had  an 
47 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

intimate  knowledge  of  nature  gained  at  first 
hand,  but  they  have  so  recently  passed  on  that 
many  of  us  remember  how  they  used  it,  where 
and  how  they  painted,  what  their  point  of  view, 
what  they  strove  to  express.  The  men  of  to- 
day— Winslow  Homer,  Tryon,  Weir — are 
working  along  similar  lines  and  in  a  similar 
spirit.  Every  few  years  a  band  of  new  men 
returns  from  Paris  with  a  new  truth-to-nature 
slogan  and  much  noise;  but  as  these  gradually 
cease  to  be  new-comers,  passing  into  a  maturer 
period,  they  mend  their  manners,  their  point 
of  view,  and  their  method  of  treatment.  They 
may  still  think  some  madness  in  Monticelli 
and  Albert  Ryder  and  Arthur  Davies,  but  they 
also  admit  some  method.  They  come  to 
realize  that  however  necessary  truth  may  be 
to  representation,  art  does  not  consist  entirely 
in  reciting  facts,  be  the  skill  in  the  doing  of  it 
ever  so  brilliant. 

To  sum  up  our  contention  let  it  be  said  that 
in  any  department  of  painting  the  model  must 
be  learned  and  unlearned,  must  be  studied 
and  abandoned,  must  be  forgotten  and  re- 
membered before  great  art  can  be  produced. 
It  is  absolutely  necessary  and  yet  is  not  to  be 
revealed;  it  is  the  foundation  and  framework 
48 


THE   USE   OF   THE   MODEL 

of  the  structure  and  yet  is  not  to  be  shown. 
The  facts  whereby  the  poet  and  the  painter 
rise  to  heights  of  fancy  should  not  be  too  much 
in  evidence.  If  conspicuously  apparent  they 
may  lead  us  down  to  earth  more  readily  than 
up  to  heaven. 


49 


CHAPTER  III 
QUALITY  IN  ART 

The  word  quality  in  art  is  so  widely  used, 
and  so  generally  confused  in  its  meaning,  that 
thus  far  it  seems  no  one  has  had  the  hardi- 
hood to  run  it  down  and  put  it  in  the  dic- 
tionaries. The  picture  buyer  has  it  launched 
at  him  by  salesmen  in  the  art  shop,  the  painters 
use  it  freely  and  somewhat  indiscriminately 
in  discussing  pictures,  and  occasionally  a 
writer  on  art  weaves  it  into  a  sentence  where 
it  sounds  well,  or  tends  to  create  an  impres- 
sion of  art  knowledge  in  the  writer.  But  they 
all  take  precious  good  care  not  to  say  precisely 
what  they  mean  by  it.  Any  attempt,  therefore, 
at  definition  is  likely  to  meet  with  dissent. 
However,  let  us  make  the  attempt. 

The  use  of  the  word  by  dealers  is  more  often 
of  commercial  than  artistic  significance.  They 
speak  of  pictures  as  importers  do  of  wines, 
silks,  or  rugs.  One  kind  of  wine  is  of  a  finer 
quality  than  another  kind,  perhaps  because  it 
50 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

is  older;  and  one  picture  is  of  a  higher  quality 
than  another,  perhaps  again  because  it  is  older, 
or  is  better  known,  or  is  a  better  piece  of 
workmanship.  This  meaning  of  quality  cor- 
responds to  grades,  kinds,  classes,  and  has  to 
do  chiefly  with  barter  and  sale.  But  dealers, 
as  well  as  artists,  sometimes  use  the  word  in  a 
slightly  different  sense  in  referring  to  the  tone 
or  light  or  color  or  drawing  of  a  picture.  A 
certain  work  may  be  spoken  of  as  having  a 
deeper  quality  of  color  than  another  or  a  more 
brilliant  quality  of  light.  The  meaning  here 
is  obvious  enough.  If  you  hold  in  one  hand 
an  American  gingham  and  in  the  other  hand  a 
Pongee  silk  you  must  be  aware  of  a  difference 
in  the  quality  of  the  texture,  and  if  you  try 
them  closely  with  your  eye  you  cannot  help 
noticing  also  a  difference  in  the  quality  of 
color.  This  meaning  is  so  closely  related  to 
the  commercial  use  of  the  word  that  it  may 
even  be  applied  in  the  first  illustration.  Wines 
have  a  flavor  peculiar  each  to  itself,  and  one 
who  has  knowledge  may  name  the  vintage  at 
the  first  taste  by  its  quality. 

But  these  uses  of  the  word  are  referred  to 
only  that  they  may  be  excluded  from  the  pres- 
ent reckoning.     They  are  not  to  our  purpose, 

51 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

though  they  have  their  place.  A  much  closer 
approach  to  our  meaning  is  found  in  the  occa- 
sional references  of  both  painters  and  writers 
to,  say,  the  decorative  quality  of  Japanese 
painting  or  perhaps  the  ideal  quality  of  Greek 
sculpture.  Here  it  is  evident  that  quality  is  or 
may  be  an  attribute  of  national  art — some- 
thing that  belongs  in  a  singular  sense  to  some 
one  nation.  Japanese  painting  produces  a 
pattern  in  form  and  color  quite  different  from 
that  of  any  other  painting;  it  is  a  race  expres- 
sion in  art  that  has  not  been,  and  cannot  be, 
successfully  imitated.  It  is  unique.  Again 
Greek  sculpture  in  its  centralized  ideal  quality 
is  unique,  original,  and  racial,  because,  so  far 
as  we  know,  it  sprang  from  the  peculiar  make- 
up of  the  Greek  mind  and  was  not  imported 
from  without.  Once  more,  it  is  not  to  be 
imitated  with  any  marked  success.  Many 
nations  have  reproduced  the  forms  of  Greek 
art,  but  none  of  them  has  reproduced  its 
spirit  or  ideal  quality.  Some  may  think  that 
the  Greeks  pursued  the  ideal  too  far  and  lost 
thereby  the  realistic  or  representative  char- 
acter of  art.  That  is  not  matter  for  present 
discussion,  but  we  may  note  in  passing  that 
even  the  bow  of  Ulysses  may  be  overstrung, 
52 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

and  that  the  finest  quality  of  art  is  liable  to 
have  its  defect. 

This  definition  of  quality  whereby  is  meant 
an  attribute  of  a  nation's  art  is  the  very  one 
I  mean  to  deal  with  except  that  instead  of 
applying  it  to  nations  I  think  to  attach  it  to 
individuals.  It  is  the  quahty  peculiar  to 
Velasquez  or  Diirer  or  Terburg  that  I  would 
talk  about,  rather  than  the  attributes  of 
Spanish,  German,  or  Dutch  painting.  And 
even  with  this  limitation  it  will  be  necessary 
to  divide  the  division  once  more  by  putting 
aside  the  mental  qualities  of  the  artist  and 
adhering  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  technical 
qualities  of  the  painter.  The  mood  of  mind 
and  its  corollaries  I  have  written  about  else- 
where^ so  I  shall  not  now  take  up  the  sensitive 
in  Lotto  or  the  impulsive  in  Tintoretto  or  the 
pastoral-lyrical  in  Giorgione.  It  would  be 
more  to  our  purpose  if  we  recognized  the 
peculiar  qualities  of  drawing,  coloring,  and 
lighting  in  these  masters  for  those  technical 
features  are  to  be  our  immediate  quest. 

The  use  of  the  word,  as  we  have  limited  it, 
would  now  seem  to  imply  an  individual  way 
of  doing  things,  what  has  been  loosely  termed 

^  "  The  Meaning  of  Pictures,"  chaps.  II-IV. 

53 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

a — style.  The  slip-shod  vocabulary  of  the 
day  would  generally  list  the  terms  as  synony- 
mous, because  people  have  accepted  the  mis- 
quoted definition  of  Buffon  that  "style  is  the 
man."  In  truth  Buffon's  meaning  is  just  the 
reverse  of  that  garbled  extract.  Style  is  not 
an  individual  attribute  but  a  consensus  of 
opinion  as  to  the  best  way  of  doing  or  pre- 
senting a  certain  act  or  thought  or  feeling.  In 
that  sense  there  was  a  style  about  the  sculpture 
of  the  Periclean  period,  established  by  the  joint 
opinion  of  the  Pheidian  sculptors.  A  school 
way  of  modelling,  composing,  and  handling 
was  followed  by  all  the  sculptors  of  the  time, 
and  followed  so  closely  that  to  this  day  it  is 
not  possible  to  say  of  the  Parthenon  marbles 
which  were  done  by  Pheidias  and  which  by 
his  pupils  or  workmen.  There  is  a  style  about 
them  all,  but  an  individuality  about  none  of 
them.  Individuality  would  have  been  inhar- 
monious, disturbing  to  the  decorative  qual- 
ity of  the  whole;  it  would  have  resulted  in 
something  Gothic,  not  classic.  In  the  case  of 
the  early  Renaissance  sculptors,  however — 
Donatello,  Verrocchio,  and  Jacopo  della  Quer- 
ela— individuality  predominated  and  such  a 
thing  as  adherence  to  a  classic  style  or  estab- 
54 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

lished  canon  was  not  thought  nor  taught. 
Each  measurably  struck  off  by  himself  and  was 
distinguished  by  his  personal  quality.  With 
Michael  Angelo  the  individual  way  of  seeing, 
feeling,  and  doing  became  almost  abnormal; 
and  quality  itself  was,  perhaps,  marked  by 
the  defect  of  exaggeration.  He  was  not  a 
Greek,  but  a  Goth,  the  first  great  romanticist, 
an  individual  who  made  laws  unto  himself 
and  produced  works  possessed  of  a  peculiar 
quality. 

But  quality  is  possibly  not  so  much  indi- 
viduality itself  as  the  resultant  form  of  it. 
Mr.  James  according  to  his  theory  of  fiction 
would  measurably  keep  himself  out  of  his  work, 
keep  his  personality  at  least  in  the  background 
by  making  his  characters  do  the  talking  and 
the  acting.  But  however  elusive  he  himself 
may  be,  his  novels  do  not  fail  to  give  evidence 
of  his  quality.  His  intellectual  curiosity,  his 
sensitiveness  to  impression,  his  subtlety  of 
thought,  his  remorseless  pursuit  of  an  idea 
are  all  there.  Even  the  defects  of  his  art, 
his  absorption  in  method,  his  overloading 
with  detail  and  illustration,  his  losing  of  form 
to  color  and  light  are  also  there.  Under  them 
all  you  feel  his  quality  rather  than  his  indi- 

55 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

viduality — that  is,  his  pecuHar  way  of  seeing 
and  doing.  There  is  a  James  tang  about  it 
that  is  pervasive  and  not  to  be  escaped. 

There  is  no  difficulty  in  pointing  out  a  simi- 
lar grain  or  mettle  in  any  and  all  of  the  great 
writers.  What  do  we  mean  by  talking  about 
verse  that  is  Miltonic  or  Byronic  or  Tenny- 
sonian  if  not  the  recognition  of  a  certain 
quality  peculiar  to  each?  There  is  a  rhythm 
to  the  verse  of  Swinburne  as  there  is  a  cadenced 
movement  to  the  prose  of  Ruskin  that  is  un- 
mistakable. We  recognize  the  verse  or  the 
prose  as  we  do  the  voice  of  Lehmann  or 
Materna  or  Sembrich.  Each  has  its  peculiar 
timbre.  No  one  can  sing  Erda  quite  so  effec- 
tively as  Schumann-Heink,  and  no  one  can 
reach  up  to  Edouard  de  Reszke  in  Mephis- 
topheles,  because  no  others  have  quite  such 
quality  of  voice  in  those  parts.  It  is  a 
Schumann-Heink,  a  De  Reszke  quality  of 
voice,  something  that  has  resulted  from  their 
individualities  and  is  again  unmistakable. 
And  quite  beyond  deceptive  imitation.  There 
are  concert-hall  singers  who  give  imitations 
of  Eames  or  Nordica,  as  formerly  of  Patti 
and  Gerster;  but  the  imitation  is  largely  con- 
fined to  the  externals  of  make-up,  of  manner, 

56 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

of  gesture.  The  voice  is  only  parodied  and 
deceives  no  one.  In  the  same  way  there  have 
been  writers  in  the  manner  of  Emerson  or 
Carlyle  or  Stevenson,  but  no  one  has  been 
deceived  by  them.  The  semblance  may  be 
there,  but  the  quality  does  not  hold  good. 

To  come  nearer  to  things  graphic  there  is  a 
quality  in  handwriting,  which  people  often 
refer  to  and  describe  with  the  word  "char- 
acter." Each  strongly  marked  individual 
shows  it  in  his  signature — shows  a  something 
peculiarly  his  own.  By  that  I  do  not  mean 
that  he  writes  correctly  in  a  writing-master 
sense.  Indeed,  the  book-keeper's  signature  is 
devoid  of  quality — "lacks  character" — though 
possessed  of  style;  whereas  the  handwriting 
of  a  Napoleon  may  be  very  inaccurate  and  yet 
have  quality  of  a  most  decided  kind.  It  is 
the  resultant  of  a  peculiar  and  individual 
make-up,  and  has  perhaps  a  physical  as  well 
as  a  mental  basis.  And,  again,  it  is  not  to  be 
imitated.  The  forger  may  trace  the  peculiar 
form  or  the  eccentric  lettering,  but  he  cannot 
give  the  quality.  That  is  just  where  he  trips 
and  comes  to  grief.  It  is  well  known  that  he 
does  not  use  the  flowing  free  line,  but  tries  to 
produce  its  likeness  by  minute  stipplings  from 
57 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

the  point  of  the  pen  held  upright.  The  result 
is  his  line  is  timid,  hesitating,  wanting  in  move- 
ment, where  the  original  has  verve  and  sweep 
about  it.  The  writer  is  indifferent  to  a  slip 
or  a  slight  variation  of  his  signature;  but  the 
forger  dare  not  risk  the  slightest  change.  His 
forgery  deceives  those  who  glance  at  it  hastily, 
perhaps;  but  not  the  expert.  It  lacks  quality. 
It  is  only  a  step  from  this  to  etching,  and  to 
the  drawings  of  the  old  masters.  The  sharp 
stamp  resultant  from  individuality  is  just  as 
apparent  in  the  etched  line  of  Rembrandt,  or 
Meryon,  or  Whistler  as  in  the  written  page  of 
Victor  Hugo.  Indeed,  in  such  qualities  as 
strength,  delicacy,  expressiveness,  the  etched 
line  outruns  the  pen-and-ink  of  a  Fortuny  or 
a  Vierge.  In  either  medium  the  men  are  not 
to  be  confused  or  mistaken  one  for  the  other. 
The  quality  of  each  man's  line,  peculiar  to  his 
method  or  manner,  is  there  as  in  the  drawings 
of  the  masters.  The  drawings,  being  done  as 
mere  sketches  or  memoranda  for  future  pict- 
ures and  not  for  public  exhibition,  have  spon- 
taneity and  character  about  them  in  an  in- 
creased degree.  No  one  can  fail  to  note  their 
quality.  I  mean  now  the  quality  of  line,  its 
strength  here,  its  delicacy  there,  its  width  or 
58 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

breadth  or  depth,  its  capacity  for  revealing 
what  it  encloses  or  suggesting  what  it  omits, 
its  value  as  contour  or  contrast  or  repetition, 
its  beauty  as  decorative  pattern,  its  expressive- 
ness as  representation — to  mention  only  its 
more  obvious  uses  and  purposes.  I  do  not 
mean  mere  mannerisms  or  eccentricities  of 
line,  which  should  be  written  down  again  as 
the  defects  of  quality,  such  as  the  "eyes"  and 
cross-puckers  in  Perugino's  draperies,  the 
square,  dark-lined  nails  and  bony  fingers  in 
Botticelli's  hands,  or  the  stringy,  anatomical  in- 
sistences in  figures  by  Cosimo  Tura  or  Cossa. 
These  are  defects  which  the  imitator  and  the 
copyist  mistake  for  quality,  and  the  forger 
seizes  upon  because  they  give  likeness  (of  a 
superficial  kind)  to  the  original.  But  they  are 
not  examples  of  the  success  of  line. 

It  makes  little  or  no  difference  what  means 
or  mediums  are  used  to  produce  this  line, 
whether  silver-point,  chalk,  ink,  wash,  or  oils. 
If  the  draughtsman  have  force  and  character 
his  work  will  reveal  them  in  any  medium.  A 
coal  sketch  by  Daumier  or  Millet  shows 
quality  as  readily  as  one  of  their  finished 
pictures.  It  appears  awkwardly  and  hesi- 
tatingly perhaps  in  early  work,  and  becomes 
59 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

intensified,  perhaps  exaggerated,  in  hter 
work.  To  come  at  once  to  painting,  the  tondo 
of  the  "Holy  Family,"  by  Michael  Angelo,  in 
the  Uffizi  is  only  a  beginning;  the  climax  is 
the  supreme  figure  of  Adam  on  the  Sistine 
ceiling.  Again,  the  "Marriage  of  the  Virgin" 
in  the  Brera,  by  Raphael,  or  his  "Madonna 
del  Gran  Duca"  is  the  pretty  drawing  of  a 
youth  trying  to  outdo  his  master;  but  the 
frescos  in  the  Vatican  reveal  the  youth  come 
to  mastery  in  linear  drawing.  Yet  early  or 
late,  as  the  work  may  be  with  either  master, 
the  peculiar  quality  of  each  is  there.  It  grows 
and  intensifies  with  years  and  experience,  but 
does  not  change  or  reverse  itself.  Pupils  seize 
upon  its  outer  form  and  exaggerate  it  until 
the  Adam  becomes  a  mere  lumpy  giant  with 
Salviati  and  Vasari,  and  the  Madonna  a 
sweet  simpleton  with  Carlo  Dolci,  but  no  one 
is  deceived  or  misled  by  the  imitations.  The 
tang  of  the  master  remains  in  the  one,  and  the 
want  of  it  is  apparent  in  the  other. 

What  a  world  of  quality  lies  in  clean,  clear 
drawing!  To  reveal  it  does  not  require  extent 
of  canvas,  or  historic  subject,  or  literary  sig- 
nificance. When  Terburg  draws  a  chair  leg 
or  a  fold  of  a  table  cover  he  puts  his  stamp 
60 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

upon  it  by  doing  it  in  his  peculiar  way, 
and  that  stamp  is  sufl&cient.  All  the  small 
niceties  of  the  Dous  and  the  Meissoniers  can- 
not make  up  for  it  or  approach  it.  They 
torture  the  canvas  in  vain,  producing  nothing 
distinguished,  nothing  possessed  of  vital  qual- 
ity. As  with  Terburg's  chair  leg  so  with  Van 
Dyck's  drawing  of  an  eye.  Look  at  the  eyes 
in  the  Van  der  Geest  portrait  in  the  National 
Gallery  in  London,  and  where  in  the  world  of 
painting  can  you  match  such  drawing  as  that! 
Compare  them  with  eyes  drawn  by  Rossetti, 
or  Burne- Jones,  or  almost  any  modern  painter, 
and  note  how  instantly  the  latter  falls  down  for 
lack  of  quality.  Even  a  jaw  by  Antonello  da 
Messina  may  have  the  power  of  astonishing  by 
virtue  of  its  telling  the  truth  in  such  a  way  that 
there  seems  no  more  to  say.  The  misshapen 
mouth  and  heavy  chin  of  the  "Sir  Thomas 
More,"  by  Holbein,  in  the  Louvre  impresses 
one  as  a  finality.  It  has  the  stamp  of  Hol- 
bein's quality  and  is  absolutely  inimitable. 
Drawing  could  go  no  further  than  that. 

Linear  drawing  is,  of  course,  only  one  of  the 

avenues  along  which  genius  in  art  travels. 

Those  who  are  primarily  devoted  to  form  use 

it  as  perhaps  their  strongest  means  of  expres- 

6i 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

sion,  and  yet  there  have  been  great  masters 
who  have  revealed  form  by  light  and  shade. 
Leonardo  is  one  of  the  earlier  instances,  and 
perhaps  not  the  best,  and  yet  Leonardo  was 
able  to  show  his  quality  there  nearly  as  well  as 
in  line.  His  shadow  is  perhaps  too  smoky ;  but 
what  a  revelation  it  was  to  those  of  his  day! 
And  what  a  following  embraced  it !  The  greater 
men  revised  it,  added  to  it,  made  it  something 
of  their  own.  No  doubt  Giorgione  and  Cor- 
reggio  derived  directly  or  indirectly,  as  re- 
gards this  feature,  from  Leonardo;  but  what 
individual  quality  they  put  in  their  revision! 
The  weaker  men — the  followers,  imitators, 
and  slavish  pupils — they,  too,  ''derived"  from 
Leonardo;  but  by  exaggeration,  caricature, 
and  a  loss  of  quality.  At  Milan,  Luini  and 
his  companions  followed  blindly  and  often 
with  a  stumble;  at  Ferrara,  Dosso  Dossi  out- 
did Giorgione  in  darkness  while  Garofolo 
grew  sooty  in  his  shadows;  at  Naples,  Cara- 
vaggio  plunged  the  model  into  an  ink-well, 
then  rubbed  off  the  ink  in  spots  for  high 
lights,  and  called  the  sharp  contrast  sunlight 
and  shadow.  Quality  was  lacking  in  every 
one  of  the  followers. 

But  it  came   into  art  again  at  the  north 
62 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

and  showed  in  the  shadow  of  Rembrandt. 
Could  anything  be  more  indicative  of  quality, 
and  again  more  inimitable,  than  that  shadow 
under  a  broad-brimmed  hat  or  around  a 
figure  or  weirdly  filling  a  room — that  shadow 
that  hides  and  yet  reveals,  makes  mystery  and 
yet  suggests  truth?  Its  very  quality  of  lu- 
minosity baffled  the  Backers  and  the  Flincks. 
They  tried  for  it  but  got  it  too  dark  like 
Maes,  or  too  light  like  Bol.  It  is  the  line  of 
departure  between  Rembrandt  and  his  pupils, 
and  is  so  broadly  marked,  so  sharply  drawn, 
one  marvels  that  the  connoisseurs  who  assign 
pictures  to  their  respective  painters  cannot 
see  it.  As  it  is  almost  every  gallery  in 
Europe  has  pictures  with  pot-black  shadows 
and  square-block  hands  put  down  to  Rem- 
brandt that  should  be  given  to  his  school. 
Light-and-shade  is  a  peculiarly  distinguishing 
quality  of  the  Dutch  master,  and  though 
during  his  different  periods  he  varied  it,  grew 
warmer,  grew  hot  and  foxy  with  it,  he  never 
lost  the  clarity  and  the  mystery  of  it. 

Color,  we  are  told,  is  not  a  good  test  of 
quality  in  the  old  masters  because  so  much 
of  it  has  disappeared  through  bad  cleaning  or 
under  coats  of  repainting  and  varnish;  but  I 

63 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

fancy  there  is  still  enough  left  in  spots  here 
and  there  to  give  us  an  intimation  of  the 
original.  The  larger  pictures  are  almost 
always  the  ones  repainted  the  most,  and  we 
usually  have  no  need  to  be  warned  about 
them.  Titian's  "Assumption"  in  Venice 
shows  on  its  face  a  lack  of  color-quality,  so 
no  one  is  surprised  to  hear  that  it  has  been 
entirely  repainted.  The  red  flush  on  the  face 
of  the  "Venus  Equipping  Cupid"  in  the 
Borghese  Gallery  says  again  that  a  later  hand 
has  here  covered  over  the  Titian  of  it;  but 
what  shall  we  say  about  the  "  Sacred  and  Pro- 
fane Love"  hanging  on  the  opposite  wall,  or 
the  Pesaro  Madonna  of  the  Frari,  or  the 
"Tribute  Money"  at  Dresden?  They  are 
early  Titians  and  give  a  color  quality  that 
grew  deeper  later  on  in  his  life;  but  have  they 
not  still  the  ring  of  genius  about  them  ? 

All  the  Venetians  had  the  color-sense,  but 
each  in  differing  degree  and  quality.  Palma 
is  possibly  at  times  the  most  refined,  Paolo 
Veronese  the  most  ornate,  Giorgione  the  most 
jewel-like.  Paris  Bordone  was  devoted  to  a 
peculiar  crushed-strawberry  red,  Francesco 
Bassano  had  a  fancy  for  an  apple  green,  and 
Tiepolo  for  a  straw  yellow — any  one  of  them 
64 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

perhaps  easily  enough  imitated  in  a  superficial 
manner,  and  yet  to  the  trained  eye  inimitable 
in  their  quality.  The  younger  Palma  played 
the  sedulous  ape  to  Tintoretto,  copying  his 
coloring  and  light  as  closely  as  he  could,  but 
what  a  difference  between  the  original  and  the 
copy!  Domenico  Tiepolo  followed  his  father, 
but  again  what  a  gap  between  them!  And  of 
all  the  young  Vecelli  and  Caliari  that  stepped 
meekly  after  Titian  and  Paolo  not  one  of 
them  ever  approached  their  masters  in  color 
quality.  Painters  to  this  day  are  bothering 
over  Titian's  palette,  and  wondering  how  he 
ever  got  such  depths  of  color,  such  glowing 
surfaces.  The  secret  is  lost,  they  say;  the 
palette  has  been  destroyed,  and  no  one  knows 
now  how  it  was  set.  But  this  would  seem  a 
foolish  lament.  There  are  more  colors  to-day 
than  in  Venetian  days,  and  just  as  brilliant. 
The  thing  that  is  lost  and  can  never  be  re- 
covered is  the  quality  of  Titian. 

There  is  a  similar  lament  from  the  moderns 
because  they  cannot  reach  up  to  some  of  the 
ancients  in  flesh  coloring.  That  is  another 
secret,  another  lost  art  according  to  the  peo- 
ple in  the  studios;  but  when  we  again  have 
a  genius  like  those  who   have   gone   hence 

6s 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

the  flesh  color  will  return  with  him.  There 
is  no  recipe  for  it.  It  is  a  quality  of  the 
man  behind  the  brush.  Titian's  flesh  coloring 
was  very  different  from  that  of  Rubens,  but 
how  excellent  is  either,  or  both!  Strangely 
enough,  their  pupils  could  not  produce  it, 
though  in  the  studio,  grinding  colors,  setting 
the  palettes,  and  assisting  the  masters  in  paint- 
ing. They  could  not  be  ignorant  of  the 
master's  palette  "and  what  pigments  he  used. 
In  the  Dresden  Gallery  there  are  two  pictures 
of  "St.  Jerome  in  the  Wilderness"  placed 
close  to  each  other,  one  by  Rubens,  and  one 
by  his  pupil  Van  Dyck.  The  pictures  are  the 
same  in  size,  composition,  and  color  scheme 
— the  Van  Dyck  being  evidently  only  a  slight 
variation  of  the  Rubens.  At  the  first  glance 
one  cannot  help  comparing  them  in  their  flesh 
coloring.  Rubens  is  cool,  clear,  convincing  to 
the  last  degree,  whereas  Van  Dyck  is  hot,  apo- 
plectic, saturated  with  blood  at  the  surface — 
Van  Dyck  who  is  usually  so  fine  in  flesh  tones. 
The  pupil  fails  in  quality.  Not  one  of  the 
many  in  the  Rubens  paint-shop  but  tried  to 
reproduce  the  quality  of  the  master's  flesh 
painting;  and  not  one  succeeded.  Jordaens, 
Grayer,  De  Vos,  Jansens  were  as  water  unto 
66 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

wine  compared  with  Rubens.  He  was  inimi- 
table. Even  to  this  day  that  flesh  color  defies 
the  copyist.  It  may  be  pried  into  and  the  fact 
noted  that  the  painter  uses  a  brown  under- 
basing,  bluish  half-tones,  reddish  shadows,  and 
pearl-like  high  lights;  that  he  introduces  red 
shadows  between  fingers  and  toes,  and  in  the 
nostrils  and  ears;  but  this  no  more  explains 
the  quality  of  Rubens's  painting  than  an  analy- 
sis of  rhythm,  metre,  assonance,  alliteration 
explains  the  quality  of  Shelley's  poetry.  The 
one-time  despised  and  rejected  Marie  de 
Medici  pictures  in  the  Louvre  (and  among 
them  are  some  excellent  things)  will  furnish 
such  quality  of  color,  not  only  in  flesh  but  in 
such  simple  things  as  a  yellow  silk,  or  a  red 
brocade,  or  a  blue  velvet,  as  are  not  to  be 
matched  in  any  one  of  the  ten  thousand 
pictures  in  the  Louvre.  You  cannot  find  such 
heights  and  depths  and  resonance  of  hue  out- 
side of  the  Rubens  canvases.  It  is  his  color, 
his  quality,  that  makes  for  such  universal 
scope. 

There  was  another  feature  of  Rubens  that 
the  pupils  failed  to  carry  away  with  them  or 
inherit  after  the  master's  death.  I  mean  his 
handling.    His  was  easily  the  most  facile  as 

67 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

well  as  the  most  certain  hand  that  ever  grasped 
a  brush.  He  did  not  load  or  drag  or  thumb 
or  make  little  hillocks  of  paint  on  the  can- 
vas in  attempts  at  modelling.  He  painted 
thinly,  with  free-flowing  pigments.  The  brush 
slipped  ever  so  easily,  making  no  mistakes, 
recording  light,  shade,  color,  drawing,  appar- 
ently with  one  stroke.  It  is  the  last  word  in 
facility,  and  yet  while  giving  the  appearance 
of  spontaneity  it  undoubtedly  was  premedi- 
tated and  largely  due  to  much  practice.  But 
all  the  practice  in  the  world  did  not  produce 
it  in  his  pupils  and  cannot  to-day  produce  it 
in  his  imitators,  copyists,  or  forgers.  It  was 
his  own  peculiar  performance,  and  has  his 
own  quality  about  it. 

All  the  great  masters  had  the  cachet  of 
quality  in  their  brush  work.  No  two  of  them 
are  alike.  Just  now  the  painter-people  have 
gone  quite  daft  over  the  handling  of  Velasquez 
and  talk  as  though  his  were  the  only  way  of 
painting  a  picture,  but  there  is  Frans  Hals  at 
Haarlem  who  has  his  advocates  too.  Hals 
was  not  so  infallible  as  Velasquez;  he  dashed 
here  and  there,  and  in  getting  a  spirited  sur- 
face sometimes  lost  drawing  under  it.  But 
he  was  usually  efifective  in  what  he  did  and 
68 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

he  to-day  commands  applause  for  his  anima- 
tion. How  different  are  these  two  painters 
from  Rembrandt  and  Vermeer  of  Delft,  or 
these  again  from  Watteau  and  Fragonard,  or 
these  again  from  Goya  or  our  own  Mr.  Sar- 
gent! It  is  not  possible  to  imitate  them. 
Think  of  one  trying  to  handle  in  that  staccato 
manner  of  Watteau!  His  pupil  Pater  tried  it, 
but  to-day  the  gap  between  the  master  and 
pupil  can  be  gauged  by  this  very  feature.  No 
one  who  knows  Watteau's  work  can  mistake 
that  of  Pater  for  it,  any  more  than  Carreno's 
brush  can  be  mistaken  for  that  of  Velasquez. 
If  our  illustrations  have  any  pertinence 
whatever  it  must  be  by  way  of  suggesting,  not 
only  that  quality  is  the  highest  technical  attri- 
bute of  art,  but  that  it  is  about  the  only 
attribute  that  cannot  be  successfully  copied, 
imitated,  or  forged.  There  is  no  difference 
whatever  between  accurate  copies  of,  say,  the 
"Sistine  Madonna,"  or  the  "Mona  Lisa,"  and 
the  originals  of  those  pictures  save  in  this  very 
matter  of  quality.  The  drawing  and  the 
grouping  are  as  easily  copied  as  the  lighting 
or  the  coloring.  They  can  all  be  reproduced, 
but  the  reproduction  will  not  have  the  verve, 
the  spirit,  the  quality  of  the  original.  It  will 
69 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

appear  hesitating,  flat,  and  spiritless  because 
a  Raphael  or  a  Leonardo  individuality  is  not 
resultant  therein.  As  for  the  forger,  he  and 
the  copyist  may  be  of  kin  and  work  alike, 
and  their  reproduction  of  Filipino's  hard-edged 
hand  or  Bellini's  round  ear  may  be  deceptive 
to  the  last  degree.  They  can  imitate  an 
eccentricity  exactly;  but  the  one  thing  they 
are  fearful  about,  because  they  cannot  repro- 
duce it,  is  the  quahty  of  the  drawing,  coloring, 
lighting,  handling.  There,  under  close  inspec- 
tion, the  old  copy  and  the  forgery  go  to  pieces. 
Like  counterfeit  coin,  they  do  not  ring  true. 

Now,  as  every  one  knows,  a  new  school  of 
connoisseurship,  based  on  the  so-called  science 
of  Giovanni  Morelli,  has  had  an  arbitrary 
sway  in  art  matters  for  the  past  twenty  years; 
but  oddly  enough  this  band  of  really  learned 
critics  has  signally  failed  to  reckon  with  qual- 
ity as  an  aid  in  questions  of  attribution. 
With  the  exception  of  Mr.  Berenson,  whom 
I  shall  quote  presently,  they  seem  to  ignore 
such  a  thing,  where  they  do  not  vilify  it. 
Seldom  do  they  knowingly  apply  it  in  the  prac- 
tical test  of  who  painted  such  and  such  a 
picture.  Instead  of  that  they  have  followed, 
rather  blindly,  the  lead  of  Morelli  who  based 
70 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

his  study,  not  upon  the  quality  of  the  different 
masters,  but  on  their  mannerisms  and  eccen- 
tricities— the  very  things  caught  at  by  their 
pupils  and  followers,  reproduced  by  their 
imitators,  and  forged  by  the  little  rascals  of 
to-day.  The  crooked  forefinger  that  Botti- 
celli drew  continually,  the  long  ear  of  Man- 
tegna,  the  heavy  upper  eyelid  of  Leonardo, 
the  balled  thumb  of  Titian,  the  long,  taper- 
ing fingers,  and  the  spreading  toes  of  Van 
Dyck,  are  about  the  easiest  things  imagin- 
able to  imitate  or  copy.  If  they  are  a  little 
overdone  the  eccentricity  becomes  the  more 
readily  recognizable  and  is  (to  the  uniniti- 
ated) a  surer  proof  of  authenticity.  The  zig- 
zagged drapery  of  Benozzo,  the  stringy  anato- 
my of  Crivelli,  the  landscape  background  of 
Lorenzo  Costa,  or  the  straw-colored  sky  of 
Correggio,  what  things  are  these  wherewith 
to  determine  authorship  when  every  little 
whipper-snapper  in  the  bottega  was  imitating 
them,  and  any  one  could  reproduce  them  after 
a  fashion  ? 

But  let  us  not  misjudge.     Morelli  and  his 

following  have  done  a  very  necessary  work  for 

art  history,   and   their  systematizing  of  the 

mannerisms  of  painters  has  proved  a  very 

71 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

valuable  aid  in  connoisseurship.  Unfortu- 
nately their  system  is  not  infallible  and  in  that 
respect  is  not  so  scientific  as  its  followers 
perhaps  fancy.  The  eccentricities  of  a  little 
man  are  worth  something,  provided  he  was 
too  small  to  have  imitators;  but  the  eccen- 
tricities of  a  Botticelli  or  a  Bellini  or  a  Titian 
or  a  Raphael  are  nearly  worthless  as  guides 
because  of  the  horde  of  imitators  who,  as  we 
know,  caught  at  those  very  defects  of  the 
great  ones.  The  feature  that  the  pupils  and 
copyists  missed  was  quality — the  only  feature 
that  cannot  be  imitated  because  springing  out 
of  inimitable  individuality.  And  just  here  let 
me  quote  from  Mr.  Berenson,  perhaps  the 
foremost  and  most  learned  of  present-day 
connoisseurs  reared  on  the  precepts  of  Morelli. 
In  closing  his  chapter  on  ''Rudiments  of 
Connoisseurship,'^  after  demonstrating  how 
mannerisms  and  tricks  may  be  forged  and 
copied,  he  says,  and  the  italics  are  his:  "In- 
deed, it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  principle,  that 
the  valtce  of  those  tests  which  come  nearest  to 
being  mechanical  is  inversely  as  the  greatness 
of  the  artist.  The  greater  the  artist,  the  more 
weight  falls  on  the  question  of  quality  in  the 
consideration  of  a  work  attributed  to  him.  The 
72 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

Sense  of  Quality  is  indubitably  the  most  essen- 
tial equipment  of  a  would-be  connoisseur.  It 
is  the  touchstone  of  all  his  laboriously  col- 
lected documentary  and  historical  evidences, 
of  all  the  possible  morphological  tests  he  may 
be  able  to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  work  of  art. 
But  the  discussion  of  Quality  belongs  to  an- 
other region  than  that  of  science.  It  is  not 
concerned  with  the  tests  of  authenticity,  .  .  . 
it  does  not  fall  under  the  category  of  demon- 
strable things." 

Coming  from  a  man  who  has  made  con- 
noisseurship  and  the  science  of  "  demonstrable 
things"  a  study  of  years  that  is  certainly  a 
statement  of  much  candor.  It  amounts  to  a 
very  frank  confession  of  the  weakness  of  his 
own  system.  In  addition  it  puts  forward  as 
a  substitute  to  take  its  place,  Quality,  the 
'touchstone"  of  all  his  scientific  data.  But 
unfortunately  Mr.  Berenson  insists  that  quality 
is  "not  concerned  with  the  tests  of  authentic- 
ity" because  forsooth  "it  does  not  fall  under 
the  category  of  demonstrable  things."  Is  it 
possible  that  •  Mr.  Berenson  is  confusing  it 
with  what  the  old-time  connoisseurs  used  to 
call  "soul"  and  "spirit,"  and  that  he  is  fight- 
ing it  off  as  the  vague  and  the  indefinite,  as 
73 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

Morelli  did  before  him?  Is  not  the  quality 
of  line  in  the  young  Raphael  recognizably 
different  from  his  master  Perugino  in  other 
respects  than  puckers  and  pot-hooks  in  the 
drapery  ?  Is  not  the  quality  of  color  in  Monti- 
celli,  oflightin  Monet,  of  atmosphere  in 
Whistler,  of  textures  in  Vollon,  of  handling  in 
Boldini  as  recognizable  as  the  facial  type  of 
Botticelli  or  the  standing  figure  of  Mantegna  ? 
These  are  not  mannerisms  but  very  apparent 
qualities.  They  are  so  apparent  to  the 
trained  student  of  art  that  he  may  stand  in 
the  middle  of  a  gallery,  to  him  unknown,  and 
call  off  the  painters  by  name;  and  perhaps 
seven  times  out  of  ten  call  them  aright.  If 
quality  can  be  so  recognized  why  is  it  not  to 
be  demonstrated?  It  is  not  a  thing  to  be 
added  up  or  subtracted  like  figures  in  mathe- 
matics, neither  is  it  a  mere  mental  figment. 
It  is  apparent  in  the  workmanship,  the  tech- 
nique of  a  picture,  and  is  in  fact  a  part  of 
it.  The  trained  eye  knows  the  ruby  red  of 
Rubens  and  the  sea  green  of  Delacroix,  as 
readily  as  the  clear  outline  of  Diirer  and  the 
golden  light  of  Turner.  Again,  these  are  not 
mannerisms,  but  qualities  that  may  be  demon- 
strated as  readily  as  abnormal  ears  and  pro- 
74 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

jecting  middle  toes.  The  latter  are  perhaps 
more  apparent  but  are  not  more  real.  The 
difference  between  the  obvious  and  the  subtle 
may  be  in  the  perception  of  the  man  rather 
than  in  the  things  themselves. 

Indeed,  quality  in  art  has  not  been  de- 
monstrated enough.  Had  it  been  used  and 
applied  practically,  as  a  constant  attribute  of 
the  best  art,  instead  of  faith  being  pinned 
to  uncertain  and  easily  imitated  mannerisms 
some  of  our  connoisseurs  would  not  to-day  be 
the  laughing-stock  of  the  man  in  Philistia. 
To  take  the  most  modern  instance  there  is  the 
director  of  the  Berlin  Gallery,  a  really  great 
expert  in  art  though  always  a  little  beside  the 
mark  in  his  conception  of  Leonardo,  insisting 
upon  a  certain  wax  bust  being  by  the  hand 
of  the  master  simply  because  it  has  the  Mona 
Lisa  smile  upon  the  face.  Did  he  not  know 
very  well  that  all  of  Leonardo's  pupils  and 
imitators  copied  the  smile  and  that  almost 
any  one  could  reproduce  it?  Had  he  asked 
if  the  bust  possessed  the  Leonardo  quality  of 
contour,  line,  and  modelling — not  to  mention 
the  mental  stamina  of  the  master — he  would 
not  have  been  misled  by  the  simpering  imita- 
tion of  a  Victorian  sculptor. 
75 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

The  same  smile  on  the  face  of  the  "Ma- 
donna of  the  Rocks"  in  the  National  Gallery, 
London,  for  years  misled  people  into  thinking 
that  Leonardo  painted  the  canvas;  but  here 
again  the  imitator  and  pupil  of  Leonardo  re- 
produced the  mannerism  of  the  master  in  a 
way  that  deceived  and  misled.  Ask  yourself 
now  about  the  quality  of  the  light-and-shade 
or  drawing  in  the  picture,  and  instantly  it  fails 
to  respond.  The  picture  shows  the  inferiority 
of  Ambrogio  da  Predis  rather  than  the  su- 
periority of  Leonardo.  The  pupil  could  copy 
an  obvious  ear-mark  but  not  a  resultant  indi- 
viduality. Connoisseurship  now  accepts  the 
Louvre  "Madonna  of  the  Rocks"  as  the 
genuine  Leonardo;  but  is  that  a  final  or  a 
correct  judgment?  Again  ask  this  Louvre 
altar-piece,  if  you  will,  if  it  possesses  the 
drawing  and  light-and-shade  of  Leonardo,  and 
the  answer  must  be  hesitating  and  uncertain. 
The  contours  are  too  thin,  the  shadows  too 
frail,  the  draperies  too  brittle,  angular,  and 
(at  the  bottom  where  the  Madonna  kneels) 
too  regular  in  their  foldings.  The  color  again 
lacks  body,  and  the  landscape  wants  breadth 
and  atmosphere.  And  yet  it  may  be  Leo- 
nardo's work.     The  argument  that  the  king 

76 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

can  do  no  wrong  is  specious  in  art.  Some- 
times the  great  masters  throw  off  inferior  work 
and  this  may  be  Leonardo  in  a  mediocre  vein 
helped  out  by  assistants  or  pupils.  It  is  cer- 
tainly not  Leonardo  at  his  best.  It  lacks 
somewhat  in  quality. 

After  reading  Mr.  Berenson's  paragraph 
one  wonders  if  the  connoisseurs  who  sneer  at 
quality  have  not  occasionally  used  it,  perhaps 
unconsciously,  as  an  aid  in  their  attributions. 
Years  ago  when  Morelli  caused  a  commotion 
in  the  Dresden  Gallery  by  declaring  that  the 
little  "Reading  Magdalen'*  was  not  by  Cor- 
reggio,  had  he  arrived  at  that  conclusion  be- 
cause he  found  no  Correggio  mannerisms  in 
it?  Was  the  neck  and  figure  wanting  in 
elongation,  or  the  mouth  not  turned  up  at  the 
corners,  or  the  straw  color  missing,  or  the 
light  not  sufficiently  centralized  for  the  Par- 
mesan master?  Or  did  he  just  arrive  at  the 
safe  conclusion  that  there  was  not  a  scrap  of 
Correggio's  quality  in  the  picture?  When, 
in  the  next  room  he  declared  that  the  so-called 
Sassoferrato  '^  Venus"  was  not  a  Sassoferrato 
but  a  genuine  Giorgione,  was  his  belief 
founded  on  certain  ear-marks  that  he  found 
77 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

to  be  Giorgionesque  in  the  picture,  or  did  he 
arrive  at  it  by  recognizing  the  Giorgionesque 
quality  of  it  ?  After  he  denied  genuineness  in 
the  one  and  asserted  it  in  the  other,  how  quick 
we  all  were  to  note  the  lack  of  quality  in  the 
Magdalen  and  the  presence  of  it  in  the  Venus! 
Blunders  just  as  egregious  as  these  are  still 
made  in  European  galleries  while  connois- 
seurs and  gallery  directors  are  looking  up 
documents,  consulting  signatures,  and  meas- 
uring ears  and  noses,  instead  of  training  the 
eye  straight  on  the  quality  of  the  work.  There 
are  half  a  dozen  or  more  canvases  in  the 
National  Gallery  attributed  to  Velasquez,  and 
any  one  may  see  almost  at  a  glance  that  they 
are  not  of  the  same  or  even  similar  quality. 
The  difference  in  them  is  not  a  difference  be- 
tween an  early  and  a  mature  style  of  Velas- 
quez, but  between  the  man  and  his  pupils. 
It  is  not  possible  that  the  bust  portrait  of 
Philip,  the  ''Admiral  Parejo,"  and  "Christ 
Bound  to  the  Column"  were  by  the  same 
hand.  Even  the  celebrated  " Rokeby  Venus" 
if  put  in  the  Velasquez  room  at  Madrid  would 
give  out  a  discordant  note.  It  is  a  little  off 
key  because  not  of  a  pronounced  Velasquez 

78 


QUALITY  IN  ART 

quality.^  In  the  Vienna  Gallery  a  small  "  St. 
Sebastian"  still  stands  in  the  catalogue  under 
the  name  of  Correggio  although  it  has  not  the 
slightest  Correggio  note  in  it.  It  belongs 
somewhere  very  close  to  Giorgione  and  in  the 
quality  of  its  drawing  and  light-and-shade  is 
quite  worthy  of  Giorgione's  earlier  years.  In 
the  same  gallery  the  eight  or  more  pictures 
ascribed  to  Velasquez  quarrel  with  each  other 
and  five  out  of  the  eight  give  no  hint  of  the 
master's  quality.  The  Raphaels  in  the  Lou- 
vre, the  Rembrandts  at  Berlin,  the  Rubenses 
in  Antwerp  are  contradictory  and  denying 
groups.  Almost  any  gallery  one  may  enter, 
in  spite  of  exact  and  scientific  knowledge 
freely  disseminated  by  connoisseurs,  is  open 
to  the  criticism  of  having  accepted  the  super- 
ficial appearances  and  rejected  the  more  abid- 
ing technical  qualities  of  the  masters. 

But  enough  has  been  said,  perhaps,  to  prove 
the  value  of  quality  in  art.  It  is  not  only  the 
distinguishing  but  the  most  distinguished 
feature  of  painting,  the  one  that  reveals  in- 

^  Since  writing  this  the  Venus  has  been  declared  by  the 
art  critic  of  The  Morning  Post  to  be  a  Mazo,  and  Maze's 
name  or  cipher  has  been  pointed  out  on  the  canvas.  A 
jury  of  gallery  directors  sat  in  the  case,  however,  and  have 
given  the  lady  a  character  as  a  genuine  Velasquez. 

79 


WHAT   IS   ART? 

dividuality  in  its  clearest  light,  and  is  be- 
cause of  its  individuality  inimitable.  In  that 
respect  quality  is  of  the  greatest  value  in 
connoisseurship.  Indeed,  it  is  to  be  doubted 
if  ever  there  was  any  accurate  judgment  of 
pictures,  any  sound  connoisseurship,  without 
it.  Morelli  must  have  used  it  more  or  less 
while  pretending  to  despise  it  under  the  name 
of  "soul"  and  "spirit";  and  his  successor, 
Mr.  Berenson,  frankly  confesses  it  the  final 
test  of  a  picture.  Perhaps  when  the  present 
phase  of  art  criticism  has  passed  out  we  shall 
have  a  more  general  return  to  the  nobler  feat- 
ures of  art  among  which  one  must  certainly 
rank  quality.  Just  now  art-interest  seems  to 
settle  more  about  the  painter,  the  cost,  and 
the  pedigree  of  a  picture  than  about  its  quality 
or  decorative  charm. 


80 


CHAPTER  IV 

ART  CRITICISM 

Was  it  Huxley,  or  some  mundane  soul  of 
his  immediate  kind,  who  insisted  that  ^'  every- 
thing sooner  or  later  is  reduced  to  a  matter 
of  finance?"  The  remark  sounds  English,  as 
though  some  Londoner  visiting  in  America 
had  written  it  home  as  description  of  our  pres- 
ent state.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  it 
sounds  more  than  half  true.  Not  that  Amer- 
ica is  so  far  ahead  of  Europe  in  commercialism 
that  the  latter  cannot  be  seen  in  the  race,  but 
that  she  usually  leads  and  gives  cry  sooner 
than  the  other.  Wherever  it  is  possible  to 
apply  the  dollar  standard  she  applies  it. 
Brains  that  have  a  "cash  value,"  newspapers 
that  carry  by  the  size  of  their  circulation, 
books  that  are  "the  best  sellers,"  teaching  and 
preaching,  service  and  song,  that  are  esti- 
mated by  salary,  are  not  fancies  but  facts. 
As  for  art  that  was  long  since  run  in  at  the 
dealer's  shop,  or  haled  incontinently  to  the 
auction  block,  where  it  is  sold  to  the  highest 
8i 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

bidder  and  eventually  finds  its  way  into  a 
public  gallery,  or  into  what  is  called  "a private 
collection." 

What  a  keen  interest  there  is  in  the  picture 
market,  in  the  prices  fetched,  and  in  the 
collector  or  gallery  that  gets  a  certain  work 
of  art!  The  cables  between  here  and  Europe 
are  kept  in  a  state  of  heat  recording  this  bid 
or  that  sale  or  the  other  purchaser  at  Christie's 
or  Agnew's  or  Sedelmeyer's.  A  Velasquez 
fetches  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  and  every  one  stares,  until  a  Flemish 
tapestry  is  sold  for  three  hundred  and  sixty 
thousand,  or  a  Hals  portrait  group  brings  five 
hundred  thousand.  Then  every  one  and  his 
friends  whistle  a  bit  and  await  with  eagerness 
the  next  battle  of  the  millionaires.  The  as- 
tonishing thing  to  the  mob  seems  to  be  not  the 
picture  but  the  price.  How  does  a  scrap  of 
canvas  held  together  by  paint  skins  and  var- 
nish happen  to  be  worth  such  an  enormous 
sum  of  money?  True  enough,  how  does  it? 
What  is  the  criterion  of  value  in  a  work  of 
art  ?  For  what  are  the  amateurs  and  collectors 
paying  their  money!  Is  it  the  name,  or  the 
pedigree,  or  the  art  in  the  picture  that  they 
struggle  for  so  violently? 
82 


ART  CRITICISM 

No  doubt  the  first  is  always  an  attraction. 
The  names  of  the  great  masters  are  pro- 
nounced trippingly  upon  the  tongue  these 
days,  and  it  means  something  of  distinction 
to  the  gallery  or  the  collector  to  have  those 
names  blazing  in  brass  from  the  gold  frames. 
The  amateur's  gallery  is  not  complete  with- 
out a  Velasquez,  so  perhaps  he  buys  a  Mazo 
from  his  friend,  the  dealer,  and  pays  a  Ve- 
lasquez price  for  it.  Or  it  may  be  that  the 
missing  name  is  one  of  recent  discovery,  an 
El  Greco  perhaps,  and  once  more  the  ama- 
teur gets  a  cramped  and  mannered  composi- 
tion by  El  Greco's  son  at  the  father's  prices. 
It  is  to  have  "an  example"  of  Romney  or 
Rembrandt  or  Rubens  rather  than  a  good 
work  of  art  by  anybody  or  nobody,  that  is  the 
original  impulse  in,  say,  three  cases  out  of 
four.  Of  course,  the  best  examples  of  the 
great  men  are  not  knocking  about  the  auction- 
rooms  and  the  shops  of  the  dealers;  but  there 
are  inferior  examples  or  even  old  copies  that 
may  be  had  at  superior  prices. 

Sometimes  the  picture  is  genuine  enough; 
it  has  the  name  but  perhaps  nothing  more. 
There  is,  by  way  of  illustration,  the  Raphael 
called    the    ''Madonna    of    St.    Anthony    of 

83 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

Padua"  in  the  National  Gallery,  loaned  by 
one  of  our  most  famous  collectors.  It  is  said 
to  have  cost  four  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
but  artistically  and  as  an  example  of  Raphael 
it  is  wholly  negligible.  It  sheds  no  light  upon 
the  painter,  it  casts  no  lustre  upon  art;  it  is 
not  of  importance  in  any  way.  But  it  has  the 
Raphael  name.  There  is,  again,  the  famous 
"Angelus"  of  Millet,  sold  for  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  which  is 
artistically  of  no  great  importance,  being  an 
indifferent  "example"  of  the  painter.  For  a 
man  who  cared  not  for  names  but  only  for 
art,  it  might  be  worth  a  hundred  dollars  to 
cover  a  break  in  the  wall-paper  of  the  library; 
but  that  is  about  all.  Once  more  there  is 
the  Soult  Murillo,  the  "Immaculate  Concep- 
tion," now  in  the  Louvre,  which  fetched  the 
enormous  price  of  six  hundred  thousand  francs 
in  1852 — the  largest  price  at  that  time  ever 
paid  for  a  picture.  If  it  were  appraised  artis- 
tically to-day  it  would  fall  quite  flat.  The 
"St.  John  of  God,"  in  the  hospital  of  La  Cari- 
dad  at  Seville,  is  worth  a  dozen  of  it;  and  no 
dozen  of  Murillo's  pictures  put  together  would 
be  worth  any  such  sum  as  the  "Immaculate 
Conception"  brought.  But  it  has  the  name. 
84 


ART   CRITICISM 

The  collector  dearly  loves  a  name  and  will 
have  it.  It  sounds  well  when  he  talks  to  his 
friends  about  his  pictures;  it  looks  well  in 
his  catalogue;  it  puts  him  into  art  history, 
and  gives  him  rank  among  his  fellow-collectors. 
He  also  dearly  loves  a  picture  with  a  pedigree, 
and  is  willing  to  pay  handsomely  for  it.  That 
a  picture  has  been  known  for  a  hundred  years 
or  more,  and  has  been  in  the  collection  of  the 
Dorias  or  the  Duke  of  Westminster,  means 
that  the  price  is  pushed  up  in  accordance  with 
the  record.  The  "Rokeby  Venus."  How 
much  of  the  two  hundred  and  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  paid  for  it  went  for  the 
"Rokeby,"  and  how  much  for  the  ''Venus'* 
or  the  picture  itself?  What  more  or  better 
assurance  of  a  picture's  rank  and  worth  would 
you  have  than  to  know  it  is,  for  instance, 
"the  celebrated  Chigi  Botticelli"?  Any  col- 
lector might  be  forgiven  if  he  made  an  un- 
dignified scramble  for  such  a  gem.  It  would 
be  the  star  picture  of  his  gallery.  And  there 
is  the  famous  "Duchess  of  Devonshire,"  by 
Gainsborough,  with  not  only  pedigree  but 
romance  attached  to  it.  Was  it  not  worth 
seventy-five  thousand  dollars  to  have  her  cut 
out  of  her  frame  and  "lost"  for  twenty-five 

85 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

years?  The  picture  itself — but  that  is  quite 
another  matter. 

Of  course  we  know  (or  have  been  told)  that 
true  art  is  more  than  coronets,  but  it  is  as- 
tonishing what  an  overshadowing  influence 
the  coronets  exert.  It  seems  quite  futile  to 
protest  that  art  should  be  divorced  from  names 
and  collections  and  auction-rooms.  Hereafter 
it  is  the  "Kahn  Hals"  or  the  "$500,000 
Hals" — either  or  perhaps  both.  The  picture 
and  its  painter  are  not  responsible  for  the 
name,  and  never  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
money;  but  art  has  fallen  upon  commercial 
days  and  must  fare  accordingly.  And  again 
it  seems  quite  useless  to  suggest  that  this  par- 
ticular picture  is  not,  artistically,  a  great  Hals. 
The  public  will  not  listen  to  such  cavilling. 
If  not  the  most  blooming,  blazing,  fine  Hals 
on  earth  why  did  any  one  pay  half  a  million 
for  it?  Answer  me  that  if  you  can.  They 
would  have  kept  it  in  Europe  if  they  could, 
but  we  had  the  longer  purse.  Now  that  they 
have  lost  it  they  are  mad  clear  through.  Be- 
sides the  critics  are  quite  bowled  over  by  it, 
and  the  newspapers  are  giving  columns  to 
"appreciations"  of  it. 

Yes,  unfortunately  the  critics,  or  more 
86 


ART   CRITICISM 

properly  speaking  the  newspaper  reporters, 
devote  much  space  to  anything  that  is  of 
popular  interest;  and  it  is  not  to  be  denied 
that  they  have  a  large  interest  in  auction-shop 
figures  and  collections.  The  commercial  phase 
of  art  is  something  they  cannot  ignore  if  they 
would.  Their  readers  would  not  let  them. 
And  aside  from  the  reporters,  the  professional 
art  critic  himself  is  interested  in  names,  col- 
lections, auctions,  prices.  He  is  concerned 
with  the  authenticity  and  genuineness  of  pict- 
ures as  never  before  in  the  history  of  art. 
Most  of  the  false  attributions  of  pictures,  the 
listing  of  copies  as  "replicas,"  even  some  of 
the  forgeries,  have  come  about  through  the 
mendacity  or  the  ignorance  of  dealers  and 
collectors;  and  it  is  not  a  small  part  of  the 
business  of  present  criticism  to  clear  up  this 
sheet  of  lies  and  straighten  out  the  record. 
The  critic  is  not  only  judge  but  he  often  has 
to  turn  himself  into  grand  jury  and  prosecu- 
ting attorney  as  well.  He  must  not  only  know 
about  pictures  but  know  also  about  picture 
forgers  and  picture  prevaricators. 

Expert  knowledge  of  pictures  or  "connois- 
seurship,"  as  it  is  called,  is  a  decided  item  in 
the  equipment  of  the  modern  art  critic.    Re- 

87 


WHAT  IS   ART? 

cently  there  have  been  many  experts  fol- 
lowing the  footsteps  of  the  late  Giovanni 
Morelli,  or  concocting  systems  and  sciences 
of  their  own.  They  have  been  revising  the 
catalogues  of  public  galleries,  quarrelling  with 
gallery  directors  and  with  themselves,  advising 
with  would-be  purchasers  and  dealers,  some- 
times unearthing  unsuspected  Titians  and 
Rembrandts  for  them,  and  finally  reconstruct- 
ing and  rewriting  art  history.  They  have 
been  of  more  service  to  history  perhaps  than 
to  art,  but  possibly  they  will  some  day  awake 
to  the  conclusion  that  after  the  history  is 
straightened  out  there  may  be  something  still 
left  to  say  about  the  art.  I  mean  the  aesthetic 
side  of  art,  which  seems  to  have  been  forgotten. 
It  may  be  that  there  is  occasionally  a  sordid 
reason  for  the  existence  of  this  modern  criti- 
cism. It  has  been  plainly  hinted  more  than 
once;  but  that  is  a  theme  we  need  not  pursue 
at  the  present  time.  It  is  pleasanter  to  point 
out  that  there  are  other  reasons  for  "connois- 
seurship,"  and  that  the  work  itself  is  interest- 
ing enough  to  draw  many  followers  in  its  wake 
who  care  nothing  for  money  or  dealers  or  col- 
lectors. Strangely  enough,  there  are  quite  a 
number  who  are  absorbed  by  it  as  they  might 


ART  CRITICISM 

be  by  a  puzzle  or  a  game.  They  become  de- 
tectives, running  down  an  old  master  and  es- 
tablishing his  identity  by  a  broken  button,  the 
missing  half  of  which  belongs  in  another 
picture,  in  another  gallery,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world.  To  study  a  master  like  Giotto 
or  Gentile  da  Fabriano,  to  memorize  his 
methods,  mannerisms,  and  eccentricities,  and 
then  to  use  them  as  clews  in  detecting  pictures 
of  his  under  false  names,  is  a  fascinating  pur- 
suit in  itself.  Many  clews  and  hints  come 
in  from  other  sources  as  circumstantial  and 
confirmatory  evidence.  The  web  grows,  the 
plot  thickens.  The  painter's  master,  his  own 
pupils,  the  whole  school,  the  people,  the 
country,  the  age  are  finally  spread  upon  the 
board.  When  these  factors  are  rightly  put 
together,  the  identity  of  the  master  established, 
the  history  of  his  school  finally  reconstructed, 
the  connoisseur  may  be  pardoned  for  thinking 
that  the  game  was  worthy  of  the  effort. 

The  type  is  the  first  thing  that  the  amateur 
detective  notices.  He  soon  comes  to  know 
the  faces  of  Perugino,  of  Pintoricchio,  of  Botti- 
celli, of  Benozzo.  Then  he  begins  to  note 
tell-tale  colors,  lights,  compositions,  handlings. 
Finally  he  gathers  up  minor  mannerisms  of 

89 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

drawing,  or  accessory  objects  in  still-life  or 
landscape  that  are  continually  repeated.  He 
grows  cunning  in  his  recognition  of  Mante- 
gna's  architecture,  of  Santa  Croce's  yellow- 
streaked  sky,  of  Gentile  Bellini's  high-lights, 
of  Moretto's  silvery  tone.  Possibly  he  grows 
cautious  when  he  is  misled  by  the  imitation  of 
these,  or  similar  mannerisms,  in  pupils,  and 
is  thus  thrown  off  the  scent.  That  academic 
Van  Dyck  hand  was  also  painted  by  Lely  and 
many  another  that  came  after;  that  Tintoretto 
halo  back  of  the  head  was  appropriated  by 
every  one  of  his  followers.  But  he  has  a 
Sherlock  Holmes  tenacity  in  running  down  an 
old  master,  as  one  would  a  great  criminal; 
and  he  keeps  on  gathering  evidence.  Very 
often  he  succeeds  in  establishing  an  identity — in 
revealing  the  true  painter  in  his  picture.  Thus 
have  been  detected  some  famous  masterpieces 
masked  behind  second-rate  names  in  galleries, 
in  collections,  even  in  dealers'  shops.  The 
game  is  certainly  amusing. 

Occasionally  the  connoisseur  who  is  fond 
of  old-master  hunting  finds  difficulty  in  hid- 
ing his  successes  from  the  world.  He  can- 
not help  boasting  about  them  a  little  in  the 
magazines,  and  accompanying  his  articles  with 
90 


ART   CRITICISM 

the  pelt  in  the  shape  of  photographic  illus- 
trations. Almost  all  of  our  connoisseurs  are 
contributors  or  perhaps  associate  editors  of 
magazines,  or  at  least  in  some  way  connected 
with  periodical  publications  and  the  press. 
That  is  their  outlet  to  the  world.  And  some 
of  them  use  it  on  very  slight  provocation.  A 
new  master  or  a  new  picture,  whether  good 
or  otherwise,  is  often  sufficient  excuse.  Of 
course  the  great  men  and  their  works  are 
accounted  for.  All  the  Leonardos  and  Ra- 
phaels and  Titians  have  been  heard  from; 
and  anything  that  is  known  about  them,  and 
is  matter  of  history,  is  lacking  in  present  in- 
terest. The  knowledge  of  it  is  referred  to  as 
"one  of  the  commonplaces  of  history,"  and  is 
lightly  dismissed  from  notice.  But  if  a  clew 
can  be  gotten  about  one  of  their  second-rate 
pupils,  together  with  a  supposititious  picture, 
and  some  confirmatory  gossip  of  an  Anonimo, 
why  then  the  item  becomes  interesting,  even 
important  or  "significant."  Such  investiga- 
tion is  often  called  "original  research,"  and 
the  investigator  is  occasionally  hailed  as  thane 
that  was  and  king  that  is  to  be.  Of  course  his 
exploitation  is  as  interesting  to  the  art  public 
as  pulling  rabbits  out  of  silk  hats.  A  new  mas- 
91 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

ter  discovered  under  a  coat  of  whitewash  in  a 
neglected  chapel!  A  work  of  art  of  priceless 
value  discovered  in  a  miser's  garret!  A  dia- 
mond found  in  a  dust  heap !  Every  one  stops 
to  listen. 

Unfortunately  the  diamond  that  is  exploited 
in  print  often  turns  out  to  be  a  poor  little  affair 
of  limited  lustre;  or,  if  it  is  very  brilliant,  it  is 
suggestive  of  some  deceptive  tinsel  back  of  it. 
The  majority  of  "finds"  in  these  days  are  of 
inferior  men  who  might  just  as  well  have  been 
left  undisturbed  in  their  oblivion,  or  of  in- 
ferior pictures  that  not  all  the  "booming"  in 
the  world  will  elevate  to  a  position  of  impor- 
tance. The  newly  discovered  master  has  his 
day,  and  perhaps  finally  gets  into  the  index 
of  an  art  history;  and  the  exhumed  master- 
piece knocks  about  dealers'  shops  until  finally 
it  passes  into  a  collection,  and  is  not  heard 
from  again  perhaps  for  many  years.  Some 
good  doubtless  comes  out  of  the  research, 
though  occasionally  the  man  of  straw,  set  up 
for  admiration,  fails  of  acceptance.  It  was 
Morelli,  I  think,  who  discovered  in  Venetian 
painting  three  Bonifazi,  two  of  whom  are 
still  shadowy  personalities;  and  Mr.  Berenson 
manufactured  Amico  di  Sandro  out  of  his 
92 


ART   CRITICISM 

head  and  cast  him  upon  an  unbelieving  world; 
but  neither  incident  should  blind  us  to  the 
valuable  discoveries  that  both  these  men  have 
made  in  misunderstood  or  neglected  painters 
and  pictures.  They  have  shed  valuable  light 
upon  the  dark  spots  of  art  history  and  deserve 
much  credit  therefor. 

Shedding  light  upon  history  is,  indeed,  the 
chief  reason  for  the  existence  of  the  connois- 
seur. He  is  establishing  the  facts  and  helping 
to  straighten  out  the  confused  and  much- 
tampered-with  record.  That  he  sometimes 
gives  his  discoveries  undue  importance  when 
he  comes  to  dovetail  them  into  history,  or 
that  the  new  histories  themselves  are  some- 
times wanting  in  judicial  poise  or  critical 
acumen  is  true;  but  history  in  general  has 
suffered  from  the  personality  of  the  writer 
ever  since  the  world  began,  and  art  history  is 
not  exceptionally  warped  or  biassed  thereby. 
Something  will  be  said  hereafter  about  the  new 
method  of  reconstruction;  but  just  here  it 
should  be  said  that  the  connoisseurs  should  be 
credited  with  the  industry  and  insight  they 
have  shown  in  getting  at  the  facts.  They  have 
labored  long  and  patiently  at  this,  and  if  they 
are  sometimes  too  close  to  their  facts  to  gen- 

93 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

eralize  about  them  the  facts  are  still  there, 
and  will  furnish  material  for  others  who  may 
come  hereafter. 

There  is  another  thing  to  be  dealt  with 
hereafter  which  should  be  at  least  noted 
now.  This  is  that  connoisseurship  has  to  do 
with  the  past,  not  the  present.  It  burrows 
among  the  old  masters  and  is  learned  about 
what  are  vulgarly  called  "antiques."  There 
are  connoisseurs  not  only  in  painting  and 
sculpture,  but  in  furniture,  glass,  silver,  tapes- 
tries, rugs — anything  that  is  old.  The  expert 
is  made  necessary  in  any  and  all  these  depart- 
ments by  the  existence  of  the  forger.  There 
is  a  great  and  growing  demand  for  things  that 
are  "very  old,"  and  the  forger  is  supplying  the 
demand  as  fast  as  his  means  and  machinery 
will  allow.  It  is  a  little  odd  this  fancy  for 
things  ancient  and  this  incessant  exploiting  of 
antiquity.  One  wonders  just  what  would 
have  come  out  of  Greece  had  all  the  Greeks 
been  crying  in  chorus  for  Egyptian  or  Assyrian 
sculpture,  or  what  we  should  have  known  of 
Italian  painting  had  Vasari  and  his  kind  spent 
their  days  resurrecting  old  Persian  and  Hittite 
masters.  However,  let  us  be  thankful  for  the 
knowledge  and  intelligence  of  the  connoisseur; 
94 


ART   CRITICISM 

but  let  us  not  blink  the  fact  that  he  has  only  a 
languid  interest  in  contemporary  art  and  that 
usually  he  likes  the  art  of  almost  any  nation 
better  than  that  of  his  own. 

This  is  a  limit  upon  his  field  of  survey  which 
would  not  perhaps  be  objectionable  if  it  did 
not,  by  inference,  create  the  impression  that 
there  is  no  other  field  worth  surveying.  Old 
art  is  not  necessarily  the  best  art — except  for 
the  purpose  of  the  connoisseur.  The  reason 
why  it  is  best  for  him  just  now  is  that  he 
chooses  to  regard  the  old  picture  as  a  com- 
modity, a  trick  puzzle,  a  historical  fact — al- 
most anything  except  a  work  of  art.  He  is 
interested  in  a  passing  phase  or  a  fancy,  and 
has  perhaps  lost  sight  of  the  ulterior  meaning 
of  all  art.  When  the  hurly-burly's  done,  when 
the  attributions  are  all  in,  and  the  old  masters 
duly  ticketed  and  pigeon-holed,  what  then! 
When  history  has  been  accurately  written  and 
the  last  inference  of  facts  duly  drawn,  what 
then!  Are  there  to  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale 
of  art  criticism?  Is  there  nothing  to  be 
thought,  said,  or  spoken,  about  the  significance 
of  art  as  art,  no  more  studies  in  resultant  in- 
dividualities, no  more  thinking  about  moods 
and  emotions,  no  more  admiration  for  form 
95 


WHAT   IS   ART? 

and  color  independent  of  price,  of  name,  of 
school,  or  of  history  ?  Is  art  merely  something 
to  be  bought  in  a  shop,  to  be  listed  in  a  cata- 
logue, to  be  hustled  in  and  out  of  collections, 
to  be  summed  up  in  history — no  more  ?  It  is 
doubtful  if  the  world  will  agree  to  that. 

For  since  the  beginning  art  has  had  to  do 
with  life  and  use.  It  had  perhaps  at  the  very 
start  a  decorative  aim.  It  has  still.  The 
charm  of  a  blue  hawthorn  jar  is  not  in  the 
name  of  the  maker,  or  the  price  it  fetched  at 
auction,  or  the  place  it  holds  in  history,  but  in 
its  loveliness  as  form  and  color.  It  is  a  delight 
to  the  eye,  whether  it  says  anything  to  our 
mind  or  not.  No  one  knows  who  did  the 
Parthenon  marbles,  or  how  much  they  cost, 
or  what  their  pedigree,  but  from  the  remains 
of  them  we  know  that  they  once  filled  frieze 
and  metope  and  pediment  quite  perfectly, 
and  must  have  been  a  joy  to  even  an  Athenian 
mob.  There  is  supreme  repose,  perfect  form 
and  unity,  matchless  workmanship  in  the  so- 
called  "Three  Fates"  that  ask  no  questions 
about  subjects  or  names  or  attributions.  They 
are  above  all  that.  Not  even  German  theories 
and  bookishness  can  drag  them  down  to  the 
material  and  make  them  merely  a  commodity. 

96 


ART   CRITICISM 

The  Samothracian  Victory  came  from  Samo- 
thrace,  and  she  is  a  Victory;  but  what  is  that 
to  Hecuba  or  any  other  wanderer  in  the 
Louvre?  The  decorative  play  of  that  dra- 
pery, strained  backward  by  the  wind,  is  what 
people  see  and  are  thrilled  by. 

Again  what  fine  things  there  are  in  the  Euro- 
pean galleries  without  name  or  history  which 
remain  untouched  by  modern  criticism.  There 
is,  for  instance,  the  "St.  Helena"  in  the  Na- 
tional Gallery,  dubiously  attributed  to  the 
Venetian  school  and  at  one  time  thought  to  be 
by  Paolo  Veronese.  What  a  lovely  thing  it  is 
in  color  despite  its  lack  of  name  and  auction- 
room  notoriety!  It  would  seem  as  though  it 
should  have  some  interest  even  for  jaded  con- 
noisseurs; but  they  keep  passing  by  on  the 
other  side  of  it.  No  one  looks  at  it  except  the 
person  interested  in  art  as  art.  Such  a  person 
might  pause  again  in  the  German  room  before 
a  portrait  of  a  young  German  girl,  ascribed  to 
Lucidel,  and  think  it  quite  lovely  in  its  char- 
acterization and  its  coloring.  But  it  has  no 
history,  and  the  name  tacked  on  it  is  unknown 
to  the  average  person;  and  naturally  few  peo- 
ple look  at  it.  Every  one  is  shunted,  by  his 
Baedeker  or  his  gallery  guide,  further  along 
97 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

on  the  wall  to  see  the  huge  Holbein  called 
''The  Ambassadors,"  which  cost  a  large 
sum  of  money,  and  is  about  the  dullest  and 
stupidest  Holbein  in  existence.  The  only 
compensation  for  it  is  that  Holbein's  portrait 
of  "Christina,  Duchess  of  Milan,"  is  in  the 
same  room,  and  people  cannot  very  well  get 
by  it  without  stopping  to  glance  at  its  dark 
beauty. 

In  the  Dresden  Gallery  every  one  crowds 
into  that  little  square  box  of  a  room  to  see 
the  "Sistine  Madonna,"  rendered  ridiculous 
by  its  false  lighting  and  inappropriate  setting; 
and  of  course  very  few  of  the  visitors  ever 
see  the  beautiful  Palmas  or  the  Vermeers  in 
the  other  rooms.  In  the  Berlin  Gallery  there 
is  a  similar  scramble  to  see  things  that  are 
"starred"  in  a  guide-book  or  made  famous 
by  auction-room  gossip  and  price.  The  so- 
called  "Admiral  Borro"  is  only  glanced  at, 
because  the  connoisseurs  think  it  is  not  by 
Velasquez,  and  thus  far  have  not  been  able 
to  give  it  a  different  paternity.  But  what  a 
superb  portrait  it  is!  What  matter  when, 
where,  or  how  it  came  into  existence!  Is  it 
not  art,  and  that,  too,  of  a  very  superior  kind  ? 
At  Vienna  there  are  gorgeous  pictures  by  Ru- 

98 


ART  CRITICISM 

bens,  famous  Infantas  by  Velasquez,  a  puzzle 
picture  or  two  by  Giorgione,  all  of  them  talked 
about,  written  about,  well  known;  but  there 
are  also  half  a  dozen  large  landscapes  there 
of  supreme  excellence  and  beauty  by  Bellotto 
that  have  never  been  dragged  into  the  lime- 
light, and  are  never  looked  at  by  any  one  ex- 
cept the  art  lover.  In  that  gallery  again  are  a 
half-dozen  or  more  large  pictures  by  the  elder 
Breughel  that  are  marvels  of  color  and  char- 
acter, and  will  some  day  be  written  up  as 
masterpieces  of  art,  with  accompanying  abuse 
of  human  stupidity  in  not  recognizing  them 
long  before. 

Even  when  we  go  back  to  the  illustrative 
side  of  painting  we  get  something  that  con- 
temporary criticism  does  not  touch  and  rather 
despises.  What  magnificent  types  of  the 
Renaissance  are  shown  in  Mantegna's  frescos 
at  Padua  and  Mantua,  what  Venetian  life  in 
Carpaccio's  canvases  at  Venice,  what  Flemish 
seriousness  in  those  portrait  heads  by  Memling 
and  others  in  the  Van  der  Goes  room  of  the 
Ufizzi  Gallery!  And  they  who  still  insist  that 
painting  has  something  to  do  with  human 
emotion  and  passion,  or  at  least  a  poetic 
mood  or  fancy,  what  things  of  import  and  of 
99 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

moment  do  they  not  see  in  the  little  "Cruci- 
fixion," by  Durer,  in  the  "  Supper  at  Emmaus," 
by  Rembrandt,  in  the  Madonnas  of  Botti- 
celli, Filippino,  or  Bellini !  There  is  the  alleged 
Velasquez  of  the  "Christ  Bound  to  the 
Column,"  in  the  National  Gallery,  which  is 
full  of  pathos  and  emotion.  It  is  not  in  the 
Christ  alone,  but  in  the  pitying  figures  of  the 
angel  and  the  kneeling  child.  Has  this  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  question  of  attribution? 
Yes;  just  this  much.  No  other  picture  by 
Velasquez  shows  any  such  emotion — any 
emotion  of  any  kind.  An  inference  may  thus 
be  drawn  against  the  picture  being  by  Velas- 
quez. But  what  has  this  clew  to  the  painter 
to  do  with  the  art  of  the  thing  painted? 
Nothing  at  all.  In  the  last  analysis  neither 
name  nor  fame  nor  price  nor  authenticity  has 
standing  in  the  case.  The  work  itself  is  art 
or  it  is  not  art;  and  it  matters  not  where, 
whence,  or  how  it  became  so.  Connoisseur- 
ship  may  yet  tell  us  to  a  certainty  who  did 
the  *^  Venus  of  Melos,"  and  whether  she  is  a 
Venus  or  a  Victory;  but  the  beauty  of  the 
statue  will  not  be  enhanced  or  changed  in 
any  way  thereby.  As  art  it  will  always  be  just 
what  it  is  now. 

lOO 


ART   CRITICISM 

The  grievance  against  the  connoisseur  as 
critic  is,  then,  that  he  not  only  deals  exclusively 
with  ancient  art,  but  that  he  deals  with  it  as  a 
commodity,  a  historical  document,  or  a  trick 
puzzle  rather  than  as  art.  He  is  concerned 
with  its  record,  its  authenticity,  and  the  influ- 
ence or  circumstances  under  which  it  is  pro- 
duced; and  when  those  matters  are  settled 
his  interest  flags  and  he  stops  where  art  ap- 
preciation really  begins.  With  its  authen- 
ticity established  the  picture  is  ready  for 
aesthetic  analysis  or  synthesis;  but  connois- 
seurship,  with  a  few  exceptions,  does  not  care 
to  dip  into  that.  The  detective's  work  ends 
when  the  criminal  is  caught.  The  court  can 
acquit  him  or  hang  him  as  it  will;  that  is  no 
affair  of  his.  So,  too,  with  the  connoisseur. 
He  handcuffs  the  facts  and  jails  them  in  a  book 
or  article.  Let  the  world  do  the  rest  so  that 
he  gets  the  history  down  aright.  But  does  he 
always  succeed  in  doing  that  ?  It  may  be  that 
there  is  cause  for  fault-finding  with  some  of  the 
history  that  comes  out  of  connoisseurship. 
Let  us  at  least  have  a  look  at  it. 


lOI 


CHAPTER  V 

ART  HISTORY 

The  writing  of  history  is  always  more  or  less 
of  an  unsatisfactory  task  because  there  seems 
no  finality  about  it.  No  sooner  are  certain 
characters  summed  up,  and  certain  facts  put 
down  in  print,  than  a  new  investigator  comes 
along  with  another  hypothesis,  or  newly  dis- 
covered evidence,  to  overset  the  former  con- 
clusion. History  has  to  be  rewritten  every  ten 
years,  it  is  said.  Why  ?  Presumably,  because 
it  is  not  written  correctly  in  the  first  place. 
There  is  too  much  personal  element  in  it,  too 
much  theory  to  prove  or  previous  hypothesis 
to  disprove,  too  much  demanded  of  the  facts. 
After  a  few  years  it  becomes  apparent  that 
the  evidence  has  been  strained  and  common- 
sense  violated.  Then  the  particular  volume  is 
pushed  down  and  out  as  "obsolete,"  and  one 
perhaps  equally  fallacious  takes  its  place. 
It  is  astonishing,  when  all  is  said  and  done, 
what  a  makeshift  affair  is  this  record  of  the 
race,  this  story  of  man,  which  we  think  must 
be  true  because  we  see  it  in  a  book. 

I02 


ART  HISTORY 

The  uncertain  character  of  history  in  gen- 
eral becomes  more  positively  marked  when  it 
deals  with  art  in  particular;  because  the  mate- 
rials are  still  with  us  to  confirm  or  contradict, 
and  after  ten  years  they  often  do  the  latter. 
Perhaps  the  investigator  has  pushed  his  work 
too  hard  in  the  high-lights,  drawn  it  too  vio- 
lently, colored  it  too  highly.  He  has  possibly 
noticed  a  few  straws  blowing  in  a  certain  di- 
rection, and  has  written  it  down  that  the  whole 
field  of  grain  was  bent  that  way.  And,  of 
course,  he  has  ignored,  or  is  bent  upon  deny- 
ing, the  observation  of  any  and  all  writers  be- 
fore him.  The  newer  historian  is  especially 
denunciatory  of  his  immediate  predecessors; 
he  denies  the  authority  of  the  Vasaris  when 
it  suits  his  purpose  to  do  so;  he  casts  out 
records,  public  and  private,  as  "petty  docu- 
mentation"; and  as  for  tradition,  that  is  not 
worth  his  attention  in  this  scientific  age  when 
a  proof  positive  is  demanded.  He  wants  the 
work  of  art  itself  studied  scientifically  as  one 
might  the  flora  and  the  fauna  of  the  world, 
independently  of  documents  or  tradition. 

All  this  sounds  very  well,  sounds  scientific. 
It  looks  as  though  we  were  finally  to  get  at  the 
facts.  And  sometimes  we  do.  It  is  when  the 
103 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

facts  are  put  together,  and  our  art  historian 
begins  to  generalize  and  draw  conclusions 
from  them,  that  trouble  begins.  We  then  find 
that  perhaps  he  has  accepted  as  fact  something 
that  is  not  proven,  or  that  he  has  misunder- 
stood its  meaning,  or  misinterpreted  it.  Some- 
times his  assumed  premises  on  one  page  be- 
come proven  conclusions  on  the  next  page; 
and  on  the  third  page  he  is,  perhaps,  using 
them  as  the  foundation  and  underpinning  for 
a  huge  air  castle  which  he  has  evolved  out  of 
his  imagination.  Usually  he  has  a  theory  to 
prove,  or  a  man  to  establish,  or  a  method  of 
investigation  to  exploit.  He  is  a  historian  of 
imagination.  The  members  of  the  craft  will 
have  it  that  the  archaeologist  or  historian  is 
lost  without  what  is  called  ''the  life-giving 
imagination."  He  must  have  a  mind  for  the 
plausible  and  the  possible,  and  an  eye  to  see, 
for  instance,  a  Praxiteles  in  a  Roman  gar- 
den sculpture,  or  a  forgotten  masterpiece  by 
Leonardo  in  a  sooty  panel  signed  by  Luini. 
And  that  as  a  general  statement  is  sound 
enough.  But  it  works  out  problematically  in 
practice.  Sometimes  the  imagination  clicks 
all  the  facts  together  like  the  links  of  a  chain 
and  makes  conviction  positive;  sometimes  it 
104 


ART  HISTORY 

leaves  the  facts  hanging  at  loose  ends  in  the 
air;  and  sometimes  it  renders  them  fantastic 
and  unbelievable.     For  example: 

When  Dr.  Waldstein  saw  a  water- worn 
marble  head  among  a  group  of  broken  frag- 
ments in  the  Louvre  his  imagination  told  him 
almost  instantly  "that  this  was  a  work  not 
Roman  but  Greek,  and  moreover  of  the  great 
period  of  Greek  art."  He  tells  us  further  that 
"the  conviction  soon  forced  itself  upon  him 
that  here  was  a  piece  of  Attic  workmanship  of 
the  period  corresponding  to  the  earlier  works 
of  Pheidias  and,  though  reserving  the  final 
verification  for  the  time  when  it  would  be 
possible  to  make  a  detailed  examination  and 
comparison  with  the  metopes,  he  was  morally 
convinced  that  this  was  the  head  of  a  Lapith, 
belonging  to  one  of  the  metopes  of  the  Par- 
thenon." So  far,  so  good;  but  had  Dr. 
Waldstein  stopped  there  and  claimed  a  newly 
discovered  fact  in  art  history  by  virtue  of  his 
intuition  or  imagination  he  would  not  have 
been  writing  history  but  recording  speculation. 
It  was  a  mere  conjecture  and  not  a  demonstra- 
tion— not  a  fact  proved.  But,  in  this  instance, 
Dr.  Waldstein  did  not  stop  there.  He  ran 
down  the  tradition  of  that  head  and  found  in 
105 


WT^AT  IS  ART? 

it  confirmation.  He  compared  the  kind  of 
stone,  the  exact  measurements,  the  treatment 
of  frontal  bone,  flesh,  and  hair,  the  frown  of  the 
brow,  the  protrusion  of  the  lip,  the  passion, 
spirit,  and  whole  quality  of  the  head,  with 
the  Parthenon  metopes.  Finally  he  took  a 
cast  of  the  head  to  London,  fitted  it  on  the 
shoulders  of  one  of  the  Lapiths  in  the  British 
Museum,  and  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing 
that  it  fitted  exactly,  even  to  the  lines  of  the 
fracture  in  the  neck.  That  I  should  say  was 
a  proper  exercise  of  the  archaeologist's  imag- 
ination— nay,  more,  a  stroke  of  real  genius. 
And  that  is  art  history  properly  constructed, 
authoritative,  and  final  in  its  conclusion. 
That  chapter  at  least  will  not  have  to  be  re- 
written in  ten  years  or  in  this  century.^ 

But  such  a  method  of  investigation  is  a  little 
too  plodding  for  some  of  our  more  advanced 
thinkers  in  history.  They  mean  by  imagina- 
tion only  too  often  the  construction  of  ''a 
working  hypothesis" — a  scheme  of  cause  and 
effect  into  which  the  facts  can  be  somehow 
squeezed  and  made  to  do  service  even  though 

*  This  paragraph  and  several  that  follow  are  taken 
with  some  alterations  from  a  paper  of  mine  read  at  the 
St.  Louis  Exposition,  and  afterward  published  in  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  congress  vol.  3,  p.  577  et  seq. 

106 


ART  HISTORY 

the  machinery  creaks  a  bit  in  the  working. 
Professor  Furtwangler,  for  example,  a  more 
brilliant  and  startling  archaeologist  than  Dr. 
Waldstein,  in  his  learned  volume  on  the  "Mas- 
terpieces of  Greek  Sculpture,"  has  no  difficulty 
whatever  in  pointing  out  to  us  the  exact 
style  of  Pheidias — something  about  which  we 
thought  our  information  a  trifle  hazy.  But 
the  professor  explains  it  very  easily  by  sup- 
posing a  case.  He  has  an  hypothesis  and  the 
hypothesis  is  the  thing.  Whether  it  wrecks 
probability  or  Pheidias  himself  is  of  small 
matter,  provided  he  proves  his  case.  He  tells 
us  to  start  with  that  there  were  countless 
copies  of  Greek  marbles  made  in  Rome  said  for 
Rome,  and  that  the  works  of  Pheidias  must 
certainly  have  been  among  the  copied.  As- 
sumption number  one.  We  have  none  of  the 
Greek  originals  by  Pheidias  that  we  can  point 
out  with  certainty,  but  that  is  unimportant. 
All  that  is  necessary  to  understand  his  style 
and  method  is  to  read  him  in  the  Latin  trans- 
lation, study  him  in  the  Roman  copies.  As- 
sumption number  two,  resting  upon  assump- 
tion number  one.  Some  people  of  limited 
culture  might  have  difficulty  in  picking  out 
these  copies,  but  Professor  Furtwangler,  who 
107 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

knows  about  copies,  variants,  and  replicas, 
has  no  trouble  in  laying  his  hand  upon  these 
various  marbles  in  the  European  museums. 
Assumption  number  three,  or  rather  a  sub- 
stitution of  Professor  Furtwangler's  judgment 
for  the  fact.  He  begins  by  picking  out  the 
Lemnian  Venus  as  the  type,  and  ends  by  mak- 
ing every  Roman  marble  in  Europe  of  similar 
workmanship  bear  witness  and  confirmation  to 
it.  And  there  you  have  the  style  of  Pheidias 
proved  to  an  eyelash.  Of  course,  this  is  a 
mere  hypothesis.  If  one  link  in  the  chain  is 
faulty  or  lacking  the  whole  falls  to  the  ground. 
The  proof  is  insufficient,  though  the  sugges- 
tion of  the  theory  is  stimulating  and  really 
illuminating. 

It  is  a  pleasant  pastime,  no  doubt,  for 
archaeologists  to  blow  these  brilliant  soap 
bubbles,  for  they  blow  large  numbers  of  them 
and  then  go  away  leaving  them  floating  in 
the  air — to  burst  of  their  own  weakness.  But 
there  is  evil  in  the  practice  for  the  student  of 
history.  He  is  young,  perhaps,  and  accepts 
the  hypothesis  as  proven  fact.  Possibly  he 
finds  it  accepted  by  others  and  written  down 
as  history.  It  is  the  kind  of  history,  to  be  sure, 
that  has  to  be  rewritten  every  ten  years;  but 
io8 


ART  HISTORY 

then  it  confuses  and  misleads  for  a  time.  The 
more  sober-minded  regret  that  such  history 
ever  finds  acceptance  not  only  because  it  must 
be  ultimately  rejected,  but  because  much 
learning  and  research  put  into  it  are  not  placed 
to  the  best  advantage  and  do  not  count  for 
what  they  should.  No  one  can  gainsay  the 
knowledge  and  the  insight  of  Professor  Furt- 
wangler.  The  only  pity  is  that  they  were  not 
used  to  establish  some  plain  record  of  fact 
that  would  not  have  to  be  rewritten.  Fancy 
in  history  is  entertaining,  but  one  does  not  go 
to  history  for  entertainment.  Neither  does  one 
go  there  to  be  misled. 

One  feels  some  regret  of  this  sort  in  the 
work  of  Mr.  Berenson,  who  beyond  a  doubt 
knows  more  about  Italian  painting  than  any 
of  our  living  writers.  He  has  been  indefati- 
gable in  research  and  some  of  his  conclusions 
have  thrown  much  light  on  the  history  of  art; 
but  on  the  other  hand,  some  of  his  fanciful 
quips  have  led  astray  and  confused.  That 
imagination,  without  which  no  historian's 
equipment  is  complete,  seems  to  be  leading 
many  of  our  connoisseurs  into  strange  lands 
and  skies.  Mr.  Berenson  is  affected  by  it 
just  as  the  others,  but  he  is  not  blinded  by  it, 
109 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

for  he  frankly  confesses  that  "Method  inter- 
ests me  more  than  results,  the  functioning  of 
the  mind  much  more  than  the  ephemeral  ob- 
ject of  functioning."  In  other  words  he  is 
more  interested  in  whether  his  hypothesis  will 
work  out  than  in  the  facts  which  constitute 
history.  And  so  on  occasion  he  "functions" 
people  and  things  into  existence  that  never 
were,  and  distributes  canvases  around  to  vari- 
ous masters  and  pupils,  perhaps  unconsciously, 
that  they  may  help  out  the  hypothesis.  There 
is  the  familiar  and  oft-quoted  case  of  Amico 
di  Sandro  by  way  of  illustration.  It  is  worth 
rehearsing. 

Years  ago  it  was  quite  apparent  to  the 
students  of  history  wandering  in  European 
galleries  that  there  were  a  number  of  fifteenth- 
century  Florentine  pictures,  variously  attrib- 
uted in  the  different  galleries  to  Botticelli, 
Filippo  Lippi,  Filippino,  and  the  "Florentine 
School"  in  general,  that  had  perhaps  a  com- 
mon origin.  A  family  likeness  ran  through 
them  all  and  it  was  generally  believed  that 
some  one  studio  in  Florence  had  sent  them 
forth.  Mr.  Berenson  took  hold  of  them,  sub- 
jected them  to  investigation,  and  showed  their 
points  of  resemblance  quite  conclusively.  It 
no 


ART  HISTORY 

was  a  fine  clearing  up  of  a  dubious  lot  of 
pictures,  done  skilfully  and  with  knowledge. 
His  conclusion  was  that  they  had  all  been 
done  by  one  hand,  and  that  the  painter  of  them 
was  an  unknown  and  a  forgotten  master,  a 
contemporary  perhaps  of  Botticelli.  Had  he 
rested  there  no  one  could  have  found  fault' 
with  his  mental  functioning  or  his  imagina- 
tion or  his  treatment  of  the  facts.  It  was  a 
suggestive  hypothesis,  a  possibility,  a  some- 
thing to  be  borne  in  mind  and  perhaps 
studied  for  confirmation.  But  Mr.  Berenson 
did  not  stop  there;  he  went  a  step  further. 
He  ventured,  half  in  jest  and  half  in  earnest, 
to  give  this  unknown  painter  a  name,  a  manu- 
factured name,  Amico  di  Sandro — that  is  the 
friend  or  companion  in  art  of  Sandro  Botti- 
celli. He  not  only  constructed  and  named 
this  painter  and  crowded  him  into  the  Flor- 
entine school;  but  he  actually  made  him 
influence  Filippino  in  order  to  account  for 
something  in  Filippino's  work  not  traceable  to 
his  reputed  master,  Botticelli! 

Of  course  this  touch  of  audacity  is  held  by 

Mr.  Berenson's  following  to  be  clever,  even 

inspired  in  method.     It  is  mental  functioning 

at  its  best;  but  who  shall  claim  that  it  is  pro- 

III 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

ductive  of  history?  The  humor  of  it  has 
something  French  about  it  and  causes  in  the 
flippant  a  smile;  but  how  does  it  help  out  the 
tale  of  facts  to  which  the  science  of  connois- 
seurship  is  said  to  be  devoted?  People  ask 
what  harm  it  does — this  jest  spoken  as  a  true 
word?  And  the  answer  is  that  Amico  di 
Sandro  has  passed  into  the  minor  histories, 
and  is  in  danger  of  final  adoption  as  a  real 
personality.  At  best  it  will  take  many  years 
before  that  man  of  straw  is  finally  removed 
from  the  pathway  and  in  the  meantime  it  is 
something  over  which  the  unwary  stumble. 
The  creation  of  such  an  homunculus  does  not 
exemplify  the  science  of  the  history  of  art  so 
much  as  the  methods  of  modern  connoisseur- 
ship.  Such  "functioning"  is  not  scientific  in 
the  true  sense,  but  purely  speculative,  not  to 
say  fanciful;  though  one  may  admit  that  it  is 
interesting,  and,  in  its  incidental  information, 
most  instructive. 

Amico  di  Sandro  is  merely  an  incident,  a 
paragraph  in  history;  and  yet  to-day  whole 
volumes  are  sometimes  written  in  a  similar 
vein,  with  greater  assumptions,  and  with  far 
more  lame,  blind,  and  halt  conclusions.  The 
higher  criticism  in  art  is  more  rampant  now 

112 


ART  HISTORY 

than  ever  was  Biblical  criticism  as  exemplified 
in  the  Rainbow  Bible.  Painters  long  dead 
and  forgotten  are  resurrected,  galvanized  into 
life,  or  reconstructed  by  the  imagination;  and 
panels  and  altar-pieces  are  tossed  about  from 
painter  to  painter  like  balls  in  a  tennis  court. 
If  an  icthyologist  can  reconstruct  a  fish  from  a 
single  bone,  what  prevents  an  archaeologist 
from  reconstructing  the  life  of  a  painter  from 
his  pictures?  There  are,  for  instance,  only 
two  or  three  bones  left  to  us  in  the  life  of  Rem- 
brandt, but  when  properly  put  together  by 
the  aid  of  the  connoisseur's  imagination  they 
may  produce  something  startling.  We  know 
nothing  of  importance  about  Rembrandt's 
youth,  family,  or  bringing  up;  but  here  is  a 
picture  by  him  out  of  which  we  may  be  able 
to  wring  some  new  facts.  From  its  style  it 
was  evidently  painted  when  he  was  a  young 
man.  It  shows  the  portrait  of  a  woman  past 
middle  life.  Rembrandt  being  a  poor  young 
man  could  not  afford  to  hire  sitters  or  models, 
and,  therefore,  it  is  very  probable  that  he 
painted  the  members  of  his  own  family.  This 
is  his  mother.  She  holds  a  book  in  her  hand. 
It  is  no  doubt  the  Bible  because  other  books 
were  scarce  in  those  days.  From  the  fact  that 
113 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

it  is  a  Bible  we  may  infer  that  Rembrandt's 
mother  was  a  religious  woman.  Ergo:  she 
must  have  brought  Rembrandt  up  in  the 
faith!  And  that,  you  see,  accounts  for  his 
painting  so  many  religious  pictures! 

Such  a  summary  of  an  argument  seems 
like  burlesque,  or  at  least  caricature,  but  on 
the  contrary  it  is  the  kind  of  reasoning  car- 
ried on  in  one  of  the  most  recent  and  most 
important  lives  of  Rembrandt.  It  is  the  "im- 
aginative" way  of  writing  history  sacred  to 
the  modern  historian.  And  a  very  interesting 
way  it  is,  to  be  sure.  You  can  build  almost 
any  sort  of  life  you  please,  as  you  would  a 
house  of  cards,  and  perhaps  one  will  have  as 
little  substance  as  the  other,  though  it  may 
last  longer.  Both  have  their  day  and  go  their 
way.  For  a  time  the  hypothesis — the  dis- 
torted biography — has  its  acceptance,  and 
helps  to  mix  up  and  confuse.  On  what  other 
score  than  this  Rembrandt  book,  or  its  like, 
can  we  explain  the  Vienna  Gallery  cata- 
loguing one  of  his  portraits  as  "  Rembrandt's 
Mother"  or  the  Berlin  Gallery  catalogue 
giving  "Hendrickje  Stoffels"  as  the  subject 
of  another  one  of  his  portraits?  There  is 
not  a  scrap  of  evidence  that  would  be  ac- 
114 


ART  HISTORY 

cepted  in  a  police  court  for  either  title.  We 
have  no  facts  or  direct  knowledge  about  the 
looks  of  either  Rembrandt's  mother  or  his 
mistress.  But  the  imagination  of  the  con- 
noisseur can  supply  the  missing  material.  All 
you  need  to  do  is  to  dismiss  documents  and 
tradition  and  study  the  canvas  itself  as  you 
might  a  dumb  animal  or  a  plant,  and  after 
a  time  it  will  give  up  its  secrets,  unbosom  itself 
of  its  maker.  And  this  is  what  is  sometimes 
called  scientific  art  history.  Some  of  it  might 
have  hard  work  passing  muster  as  historical 
romance. 

In  reading  the  history  of  art,  as  it  is  writ- 
ten, one  sometimes  sighs  for  a  good  book  on  the 
"Value  of  Human  Testimony."  And  a  com- 
panion volume  on  "What  is  Logic?"  They 
should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  every  his- 
torian and  studied  as  the  law  and  the  gospel. 
It  is  necessary,  of  course,  that  the  connoisseur- 
writer  should  know  what  is  a  copy,  what  is  an 
original,  what  is  a  variant,  what  is  a  forgery; 
but  it  is  also  necessary  that  he  should  know 
what  is  common-sense.  It  is  not,  for  instance, 
common-sense,  when  gathering  evidence,  to 
cast  out  all  documents  about  pictures  simply 
because  some  of  them  have  been  misleading 
115 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

or  erroneous.  A  Raphael  contract  or  agree- 
ment to  paint  a  "Hercules  and  the  Nemean 
Lion"  may  be  worthless  because  the  agree- 
ment was  never  carried  out,  but  a  Raphael 
agreement  for  a  "School  of  Athens"  would  be 
excellent  evidence  because  the  agreement  was 
carried  out.  To  be  sure,  a  document  may 
point  to  a  certain  altar-piece,  which  was  after- 
ward stolen  and  a  copy  quietly  put  in  its 
place;  and  in  such  a  case  criticism  is  justified 
in  saying,  from  the  picture  itself,  that  it  is  a 
copy  and  not  the  original!  But  the  agree- 
ment of  Correggio  to  paint  the  "Holy  Night," 
now  in  the  Dresden  Gallery,  is  extant,  and  is 
good  corroborative  proof  of  the  Dresden  pict- 
ure having  been  painted  by  Correggio.  True 
enough,  documents  have  been  forged,  and 
so  also  have  signatures  but  there  are  true 
documents  as  there  are  true  signatures,  and 
either  or  both  of  them  may  be  trustworthy 
evidence.  The  question  of  probability  comes 
in  just  here.  There  is  nothing  inherently 
improbable  about  the  inscription  on  the  St. 
Bavon  altar-piece  to  the  effect  that  Hubert 
van  Eyck  began  it  and  Jan  van  Eyck  finished 
it.  If  it  were  a  lie  it  is  not  conceivable  that 
it  would  have  been  tolerated  there  in  the  first 
ii6 


ART  HISTORY 

place.  It  has  always  been  accepted  as  a  true 
statement  until  the  recent  exhibition  of  early 
Flemish  art  at  Bruges  gave  the  connoisseurs  a 
chance  to  formulate  doubts  and  spin  theories. 
The  St.  Bavon  altar-piece,  as  attributed,  failed 
to  support  the  theories  and,  of  course,  the 
theories  could  not  be  in  error;  it  was  the  altar- 
piece  that  was  wrong. ^  Then  followed  slur 
and  innuendo,  the  glance  askance,  and  the 
"I  could  an'  I  would,"  all  because  the  con- 
noisseurs wanted  to  reconstruct  the  lost  per- 
sonality of  Hubert  van  Eyck  by  taking  away 
from  the  established  personality  of  Jan  van 
Eyck.  In  fact  the  extravagance  of  the  newer 
criticism  has  never  been  so  patently  exempli- 
fied as  in  the  recent  attempts  at  rewriting  the 
history  of  the  early  Flemings.  The  writers 
have  put  down  a  long  series  of  unsupported 
guesses  and  asked  their  acceptance  as  facts, 
ignoring  all  the  traditions  and  histories  of  the 
past,  with  signatures  and  inscriptions,  as  mere 
documentary  rubbish  of  no  importance. 
Without  doubt  signatures,  documents,  an- 

*  Albrecht  Diirer  saw  it  in  15  21  and  wrote  of  it  as  "  Jan 
van  Eyck's  picture."  He  continues:  "It  is  a  most  pre- 
cious painting,  full  of  thought,  and  the  Eve,  Mary  and  God 
the  Father  are  specially  good."  (Moore's  Albert  Diirer,  p. 
ISS-) 

117 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

cient  records,  traditions  need  support  by  the 
internal  evidence  of  the  work  itself.  The  mere 
tale  as  told,  whether  it  comes  from  Lucian 
or  Vasari,  is  not  to  be  trusted  implicitly.  It 
may  be  only  corroborative  proof.  It  needs 
confirmation  but  is  nevertheless  an  aid  to  con- 
viction. It  cannot  be  tossed  aside  as  worth- 
less nor  yet  again  be  used  as  a  skeleton-key 
to  unlock  any  door.  That  Pliny  records  the 
making  of  a  Venus  by  Skopas  is  no  proof  what- 
ever that  a  Venus  found  in  the  ruins  of  Rome 
is  a  copy  or  a  variant  of  the  Skopas  marble. 
At  that  rate  documents  could  be  made  to 
prove  anything  you  pleased.  If,  on  the  con- 
trary, Vasari  says  that  Giorgione  was  a  pupil 
of  Bellini  and  this  is  uncontradicted  by  other 
testimony,  it  is  to  be  believed,  even  though 
Giorgione  showed  no  trace  of  the  Bellini  shop 
in  his  work.  Bastien-Lepage  did  not  show 
Cabanel  nor  did  Whistler  show  Gleyre,  but 
each  was  a  pupil  of  each  as  stated. 

The  chronicle  has  been  treated  as  "old 
woman's  gossip"  or  "final  truth"  just  as  the 
historian  using  it  chose  to  regard  it  or  needed  it 
in  his  theory;  but  it  is  unbelievable  that  its 
value  has  been  properly  estimated  in  either 
case.  Much  of  what  the  old  chroniclers 
ii8 


ART  HISTORY 

have  put  down  may  be  treated  lightly.  The 
threadbare  stories  about  Daedalus,  the  first 
sculptor  of  Greece,  who  carved  the  gods  so 
true  to  life  that  they  had  to  be  bound  with 
ropes  to  keep  them  from  walking  away,  about 
Zeuxis  deceiving  the  birds  with  his  painted 
grapes,  and  Parrhasius  deceiving  Zeuxis  with 
his  painted  curtain  are  merely  pleasant  non- 
sense that  no  one  believes.  Quite  useless,  as 
well  as  improbable,  too,  are  many  tales  from 
Vasari — that  story,  for  instance,  retold  from 
Ghiberti,  of  Giotto,  the  sheep-boy,  being  dis- 
covered by  Cimabue  drawing  sheep  on  a  stone, 
and  the  old  painter  standing  aghast  at  the 
excellence  of  the  drawing.  The  story  is  of 
small  importance,  whether  fact  or  fiction;  but 
we  have  a  strong  inducement  to  doubt  it  be- 
cause we  have  Giotto's  sheep  preserved  to  us 
on  the  wall  of  the  Arena  Chapel  in  Padua. 
They  are  miserable  little  wooden  sheep,  out  of 
a  toy  Noah's  ark;  and  not  even  a  Byzantine- 
trained  painter,  such  as  Cimabue,  could  have 
been  staggered  by  them.  On  the  contrary, 
had  the  story  read  that  Giotto  was  a  donkey- 
boy,  and  was  discovered  by  Cimabue  drawing 
his  donkey,  it  would  be  equally  unimportant, 
perhaps,  but  certainly  more  believable;  for 
119 


WHAT  I§   ART? 

we  have  Giotto's  donkey  in  the  ''Flight  into 
Egypt"  in  that  same  Arena  Chapel,  and  a  very 
excellent  donkey  it  is,  too.  It  might  easily 
enough  have  astonished  Cimabue,  for  it  is 
astonishing  to  artiots  of  greater  learning  at  the 
present  day. 

Even  tradition  handed  down  from  mouth  to 
mouth  is  not  a  thing  to  be  lightly  set  aside,  as 
the  higher  critics  are  wont  to  do.  It  is  often 
the  very  foundation  of  the  facts.  Traditional 
accounts  of  Columbus,  of  Charles  V,  of  Napo- 
leon— their  methods  of  work,  their  conversa- 
tion, their  personal  appearance — may  all  be 
acceptable.  Just  so  with  traditions  about  art 
works — who  the  builder  of  the  Great  Pyramid 
at  Gizeh,  whence  the  brass  horses  of  San 
Marco  at  Venice,  when  and  how  the  sculpt- 
ured facades  of  Amiens  or  Rheims.  If  all  the 
history  of  the  Sistine  Chapel  were  lost  the  tra- 
dition that  Michael  Angelo  painted  the  ceiling 
would  still  be  believable.  The  frescos  them- 
selves would  corroborate  it. 

The  frescos  themselves!  Ay:  there's  the 
rub.  For  it  cannot  be  denied  that  tradition, 
documents,  hearsay,  and  even  the  tales  of  the 
annalists,  are  not  exactly  the  most  direct  or 
the  best  evidence.     To  repeat,  they  are  cor- 

120 


ART  HISTORY 

roborative  rather  than  prima  facie.  They 
may  point  out  the  picture  or  the  marble,  but 
the  work  itself  must  speak  and  confirm  its 
identity.  There  the  higher  criticism  in  art  is 
well  based  and  deserving  of  serious  consider- 
ation. Yet  just  because  the  analysis  of  the 
picture  itself  is  the  most  entertaining,  and  per- 
haps the  most  certain,  of  all  methods  it  is  the 
one  that  is  the  oftenest  used  and  the  oftenest 
put  in  peril.  It  is  so  easy  to  determine,  almost 
at  a  glance,  the  national  and  provincial  char- 
acteristics of  a  work — so  easy  to  locate  it  in 
its  century,  its  school,  its  town,  almost  its 
workshop — that  its  history  and  authorship  are 
often  jumped  at  with  equal  ease  and  haste. 
But,  as  I  have  said,  the  difficulty  in  identifica- 
tion is  enormously  increased  as  the  hunt  draws 
to  a  close.  When  the  style,  technique,  type, 
mannerisms,  and  characteristics  of  an  altar- 
piece  are  so  marked  that  you  locate  it  in  the 
workshop  of  a  master  at  Venice  or  Milan  or 
Ferrara  your  search  has  really  begun  anew. 
You  are  now  confronted  with  the  possibilities 
of  pupils,  imitators,  copyists,  and  forgers. 
Great  caution  is  necessary,  and  in  the  end  the 
final  and  conclusive  test  may  not  be  used  at 
all.     I  mean  the  appeal  to  the  quality  of  the 

121 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

picture.  It  is  often  omitted  entirely,  because 
considered  unscientific.  It  brings  in  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  artist,  and  the  spirit  and  feel- 
ing of  his  work,  which  is  not  higher  criticism 
but  last  century's  method  of  criticism.  With 
quality  omitted  from  the  case,  and  tradition, 
documentation  and  record  cast  out  as  worth- 
less, the  authenticity  of  the  altar-piece  hangs 
solely  on  its  internal  evidence.  This  is  so  liable 
to  misinterpretation,  so  susceptible  of  misrep- 
resentation, that  it  cannot  be  accounted  as 
always  conclusive.  It  is  hypothetical,  prob- 
lematical. 

So  it  may  be  surmised  that  with  all  the 
newer  and  higher  criticism  has  taught  us  in 
the  study  of  works  of  art  as  human  documents, 
there  is  still  room  for  doubt  and  cause  for 
caution.  And  these  inevitably  centre  about  ex- 
travagant theories  and  impossible  hypotheses. 
The  very  imagination,  which  is  accounted  a 
virtue  in  the  historian,  has  by  its  continu- 
ous abuse  among  the  smaller  folk  become 
little  short  of  a  vice.  By  its  employment  the 
history  of  the  old  masters  has  become  less  of 
a  fact  and  more  of  a  fiction  until  now  people 
scarcely  know  what  to  believe  about  the  Van 
Eycks  or  Giorgione,  about  Verrocchio  or  the 

122 


ART  HISTORY 

della  Robbias.  Scepticism  is  bred  of  this  con- 
fusion, and  I  know  no  more  discouraging  state 
of  mind  than  that.  When  a  person  knows  not 
what  to  beheve  and  doubts  everything,  he 
sometimes  thinks  that  at  least  he  is  scientific; 
but  in  reahty  he  is  only  unhappy. 

But  is  there  no  other  side  to  the  shield  ?  Is 
all  the  critical  history  of  the  time  so  warped 
that  there  is  no  straight  edge  about  it?  Oh 
no.  There  is  plenty  of  sane  and  safe  history 
written  to-day,  though  perhaps  it  does  not 
attract  the  notice  that  it  should.  It  is  more 
spectacular  and  "fetching"  to  do  something 
ultra,  to  ride  a  hobby,  or  chase  a  theory,  or 
knock  off  something  that  is  inspired,  than  to 
write  a  plain  unvarnished  tale.  The  connois- 
seur who  oversets  all  our  previous  conceptions 
by  denying  everything  in  favor  of  some  new 
theory  is  bound  to  attract  more  attention  than 
the  conservative  who  merely  adds  his  stone  to 
the  cairn.  But  even  the  most  erratic  connois- 
seur brings  some  truth  and  knowledge  in  his 
pack.  He  is  sound  in  spots.  And  it  is  worth 
noting  that  he  is  always  the  severest  critic  of 
his  brother  critics.  Nothing  so  provokes  him 
as  the  unsustained  efforts  of  other  workers  in 
the  vineyard.  So  that  the  tendency  of  histori- 
123 


WHAT   IS  ART? 

cal  criticism  is  to  correct  itself,  to  grow  more 
rational  as  it  grows  in  years  and  experience. 
There  will  be  less  twisting  of  facts  to  suit  a 
theory,  less  of  subjective  imagination  and 
mental  functioning,  as  the  body  of  criticism 
becomes  better  established.  The  facts  are  the 
things  and  they  should  be  stated  as  they  are 
and  the  reader  allowed  to  draw  his  own  con- 
clusions. It  is  the  affair  of  the  historian,  first 
and  foremost,  to  get  at  the  truth:  it  is  not,  or 
should  not  be,  his  affair  to  be  spinning  theories 
of  his  own  or  forever  trying  to  put  some  other 
person's  theory  in  the  wrong.  He  should  not 
be  an  advocate  trying,  by  contorted  statement 
and  specious  argument,  to  establish  the  case 
for  some  crack-brained  master  or  wonderful 
masterpiece  that  he  has  exhumed  from  the 
past.  On  the  contrary  he  should  be  an  un- 
biassed investigator  and  judge,  trying  to  estab- 
lish the  truth  though  the  findings  should  shake 
his  particular  idol  from  its  pedestal. 

Of  course,  most  of  the  hypotheses  of  the  con- 
noisseurs and  historians  will  pass  away  and  be 
forgotten.  They  have  done  more  to  unsettle, 
perhaps,  than  to  convince.  But  the  historic 
materials  gathered  for  their  exploitation  have 
been  wonderfully  informing,  and  they  will  un- 
124 


ART   HISTORY 

doubtedly  be  used  as  the  basis  of  a  truer  de- 
velopment of  history  hereafter.  Then,  too, 
there  is  almost  sure  to  be  a  reaction  against 
theorizing  and  in  favor  of  the  plain  assembling 
of  facts.  Some  of  the  more  recent  mono- 
graphs and  studies  seem  to  point  that  way. 
In  them  one  seems  to  feel  the  disposition  to 
get  at  the  truth  without  prejudice  or  bias,  for 
there  is  an  absence  of  dogmatic  utterances 
and  hair-splitting  hypotheses.  That,,  it  seems, 
is  as  it  should  be.  If  there  is  anything  very 
obvious  or  noteworthy  about  the  man  or  his 
work  or  his  period  the  facts  will  all  point  to  it; 
if  there  is  not,  all  the  argument  in  the  world 
will  fail  to  convince.  In  fact,  argument  often 
defeats  its  own  ends.  There  is  something 
radically  wrong  with  the  theory  that  has  to  be 
beaten  into  you  through  five  hundred  pages. 
It  is  too  vehement  in  protestation. 

Then,  too,  our  connoisseurs  and  historians 
may  some  day  conclude  that  it  is  worth  while 
paying  some  attention  to  the  art  history  of  their 
own  time,  as  Vasari,  or  Palomino,  or  even  the 
American  Dunlap,  did  before  them.  Neither 
our  literature  nor  our  art  is  so  excellent  as  that 
of  the  past,  perhaps;  but  at  least  it  has  the 
merit  of  being  different.  It  is  neither  despic- 
125 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

able  nor  negligible  though  the  higher  criticism 
seems  disposed  both  to  sneer  at  it  and  neglect 
it.  That  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the  modern 
spirit.  It  likes  nothing  of  its  own  time.  Its 
art,  like  its  wines,  must  be  of  ancient  vintage. 
A  mania  for  things  old  is  upon  us,  and,  of 
course,  things  new  receive  slight  consideration 
or  attention.  How  deep-seated  that  mania  is, 
and  how  deadening  to  any  original  impulse  in 
art  it  may  become,  are  worthy  not  only  of  in- 
quiry but  of  reflection.  Art  never  came  out  of 
a  nation  that  lacked  faith  in  itself.  All  the 
culture  and  cosmopolitanism  in  the  world  will 
not  take  the  place  of  self-conviction  and  native 
impulse.  We  shall  find  the  illustration  of  it 
here  in  America  where  just  now  we  are  striv- 
ing to  be  almost  anything  or  everything  except 
something  American. 


Z26 


CHAPTER  VI 

ART  APPRECIATION 

When  the  American  colonies  fulminated  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  and  with  fixed 
bayonets  started  upon  an  independent  career, 
they  at  least  showed  confidence  in  themselves. 
They  had  been  dangling  from  the  British 
apron-string  for  many  years  and  it  required 
some  courage  of  conviction  to  cut  the  binding 
tie.  Such  courage  was  justified,  though  the 
results  were  not  immediately  apparent,  for 
the  first  hundred  years  of  the  republic  were 
narrow,  circumscribed,  and  not  too  intelligent 
years.  But  the  nation  believed  in  itself,  sup- 
ported itself,  defended  itself.  It  stood  up 
sturdily  and  had  little  to  do  with  other  nation- 
alities. It  planted  and  watered  and  gathered 
the  increase,  it  dug  and  hewed  and  built,  it 
legislated  and  elected  and  inaugurated,  it 
wrote  and  carved  and  painted;  and  in  almost 
every  one  of  these  activities,  whether  the  result 
was  good  or  bad,  at  least  it  was  original — the 
people's  very  own. 

127 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

We  hardly  realize  at  the  present  time  just 
what  the  national  isolation  was  in  the  early 
days,  or  how,  within  the  country  itself,  certain 
settlements  were  cut  off  from  other  settlements. 
When  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century  people  went  over  the  Alleghanies  into 
Kentucky  and  Illinois,  they  put  fortitude  in 
their  purse,  for  no  twenty-four-hour  train 
whirled  them  out  or  brought  them  back.  They 
went  by  wagon-train  and  river-boat,  and,  once 
there,  they  did  not  soon  return.  They  were 
cut  off  from  their  depot  of  supplies  respecting 
almost  every  commodity.  If  they  wanted  a 
hat  or  a  coat,  a  wagon  or  a  gun,  a  plough  or  an 
axe,  they  did  not  telephone  East  and  have  one 
sent  out  the  next  day  by  express;  but  sat  down 
and  made  it  by  their  wits  from  the  surround- 
ing materials.  Every  one  was  his  own  hunter, 
farmer,  woodsman,  and  craftsman.  The  car- 
penter became  the  architect,  the  stone-mason 
the  sculptor;  and  the  house-and-sign  painter, 
after  making  his  own  colors,  brushes,  and 
panels,  frequently  painted  his  neighbors'  por- 
traits in  his  own  fashion,  without  precedent, 
tradition,  or  previous  technical  education. 
Each  one  was  self-reliant  from  necessity.  He 
did  things  in  an  individual  way  because  he  had 
128 


ART  APPRECIATION 

not  the  temptation  of  any  other  person's  ex- 
ample. Oftentimes  the  wonder  was,  not  that 
the  product  was  so  very  good  in  itself,  but  that 
the  producer  was  able  to  do  it  at  all.  And 
oftentimes,  again,  it  is  astonishing,  what  char- 
acter, force,  and  real  artistic  worth  lie  in  this 
native  work.  The  Harding  "craze"  in  New 
England  was  perhaps  over-enthusiasm,  but  it 
was  not  madness.  Many  of  his  portraits  are 
rude  in  technique  but  excellent  in  truth  and  sin- 
cerity. There  was  no  great  furore  in  the  more 
conservative  New  York  over  Brown,  the  sculp- 
tor; but  his  "Washington,"  in  Union  Square — 
the  first  equestrian  statue  ever  cast  in  the  United 
States — speaks  in  no  uncertain  tones,  defying 
any  of  the  Parisian  moderns  to  better  it.  And 
in  that  same  period  there  was  many  a  city  hall 
and  church  and  college  building  put  up  that 
in  dignity,  sobriety,  and  proportion  more  than 
hold  their  own  with  the  Beaux- Arts  structures 
of  to-day. 

But  it  was  not  long  before  the  scholar — the 
person  of  skill  and  style  and  manner — made 
his  appearance  in  the  arts.  The  Storys  trailed 
away  to  Italy  and  learned  from  the  marbles 
of  Bernini  and  Canova  how  to  pose  and  carve 
in  stone  the  romantic  characters  of  history. 
129 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

They  sent  them  back  to  the  United  States  and 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  people  grow  sad- 
eyed  over  such  marble  dolls  as  "Zenobia" 
and  "  Cleopatra."  The  Richardsons  gathered 
up  medieval  architecture,  and  were  presently 
building  churches  and  public  buildings  with 
Romanesque  walls  and  towers  which  were  no 
more  called  for  by  American  needs  or  life  or 
light  than  so  much  Indian  temple  or  Chinese 
pagoda.  And  the  Hunts  came  back  with 
French  painting  in  their  kit,  or  worse  yet, 
Munich  or  Dusseldorf  methods,  and  set  up 
studios  to  teach  us  that  we  ourselves  were  noth- 
ing in  painting,  -presumably  never  could  be 
anything,  and  that  the  best  thing  for  us  to  do 
was  to  tag  after  Couture  or  Millet  or  Piloty  or 
Kaulbach. 

In  1876,  with  the  Centennial  Exposition  at 
Philadelphia,  a  first  glimpse  of  foreign  art 
came  to  many  of  our  people.  Its  effect  was 
immediate.  Our  pictures  were  written  down 
as  worthless,  our  methods  were  crude  and 
silly,  our  pioneers  in  the  arts  a  group  of  igno- 
rant and  purblind  moles.  Everything  the  for- 
eigners did  was  so  much  better  than  anything 
we  could  do  that  there  was  only  one  course 
open  to  us — to  follow  their  example.  Art  after 
130 


ART  APPRECIATION 

all  was  wider  than  race  or  nationality.  It  was 
universal.  And  method  could  or  should  be 
cosmopolitan — that  is  the  gathered  force  of  the 
best  traditions  derived  from  any  and  all 
sources.  What  wonder  then  that  group  after 
group  of  would-be  architects,  sculptors,  and 
painters  went  out  from  America  immediately 
following  the  awakening,  went  over  to  Europe 
to  study  and  travel  and  gather  wherever  and 
however  they  could. 

The  newly  developed  facilities  of  transpor- 
tation enabled  our  students  to  reach  Europe 
easily;  and,  after  a  few  years,  the  same  facili- 
ties just  as  easily  brought  them  home,  loaded 
with  foreign  ideas,  teachings,  and  methods.  A 
new  art  propaganda  was  soon  established  here 
by  the  returned  students,  and  speedily  ac- 
cepted. Beaux-Arts  buildings  began  to  crop 
up  in  the  cities;  the  blue-f rocked  and  wooden- 
shoed  peasantry  of  France,  with  Concarneau 
streets  and  Seine  landscapes,  came  to  dot  the 
exhibitions  of  the  art  societies;  and  allegorical 
figures,  style  Paul  Dubois,  or  animals,  style 
Barye,  or  equestrian  statues,  style  Fremiet, 
began  to  show  in  our  public  parks.  But  the 
deluge  did  not  arrive  until  some  years  later. 
When  our  millionaires  came  into  their  own, 
131 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

and  Europe  found  we  had  more  money  than 
we  knew  what  to  do  with,  then  began  the 
unloading  at  our  doors  of  the  art  plunder  of 
all  creation.  Almost  every  country  of  the 
globe  sent  its  quota.  England,  France,  Hol- 
land, Italy,  even  Asia  and  the  further  islands, 
were  soon  supplying  us  with  the  luxurious 
things  of  life — pictures,  marbles,  bronzes, 
rugs,  tapestries,  porcelains,  furniture,  fire- 
places, ceilings.  Almost  anything  that  was 
old,  and  made  elsewhere  than  in  America, 
was  eagerly  accepted  and  paid  for  at  aston- 
ishing prices.  When  the  stock  of  originals 
ran  low,  as  was  inevitable,  the  canny  trades- 
men began  supplying  copies,  and  even  for- 
geries. But  this  in  no  way  lessened  the  de- 
mand, though  exposure  followed  exposure. 
The  people  were  daft  over  "antiques"  and 
things  of  foreign  manufacture.  They  are  still 
in  that  silly  state.  With  many  nothing  but 
what  is  imported  need  apply.  The  importer 
flatters  us  by  saying  that  we  know  a  good  thing 
when  we  see  it,  or  perhaps  we  flatter  ourselves 
with  some  such  cheaply  expressed  belief. 

Now  during  all  this  time  and  even  down  to 
the  present  moment  America  has  preserved  its 
independence  and  self-reliance  in  certain  de- 
13a 


ART  APPRECIATION 

partments.  We  do  not  accept  foreign  ideas 
about  bridge-making  or  cotton-growing  or  corn 
raising.  We  know  our  own  mind  in  the  matter 
of  irrigation  or  railroading  or  manufacturing; 
and  we  are  not  disposed  to  accept  any  other 
mind  in  matters  of  government  or  economics 
or  general  education.  In  the  every-day  affairs 
of  living  we  still  hold  to  our  own  methods,  and 
are  abundantly  successful.  Where  we  grow 
weak-kneed,  with  a  tendency  toward  kneeling, 
is  in  social  life,  in  manners  and  customs,  and 
above  all  in  the  arts.  In  the  early  days  of 
the  republic,  as  we  have  premised,  the  arts 
were  harsh  in  method  but  at  least  honest  and 
self-respecting.  Now  method  has  become, 
even  in  native  hands,  facile,  ductile,  slippery, 
and  uncertain,  having  been  gathered  up  from 
all  creation  and  blended  into  a  cosmopolitan 
limpidity  or  insipidity  as  forceless  as  it  is  in- 
sincere. In  matter  we  no  longer  trust  our- 
selves, but  accept  an  alien  point  of  view.  And 
like  all  borrowers,  of  course,  we  borrow  the 
wrong  things  and  imitate  the  defects  rather 
than  the  qualities  of  foreign  art.  As  a  result 
the  borrowed  product  is  inappropriate,  insig- 
nificant, wholly  inexpressive  of  our  time,  our 
people,  or  our  civilization.     It  neither  repre- 

^33 


WHAT   IS  ART? 

sents  nor  fulfils;  it  is  an  imported  hybrid — 
something  not  grown  from  our  soil  nor  native 
to  our  climate. 

The  borrowings  of  the  architects  are  per- 
haps as  graceless  as  any  class  in  the  country. 
It  would  seem  as  though  the  majority  of  them 
went  abroad,  not  to  study  planning  and  con- 
struction so  much  as  to  get  a  portfolio  of 
photographs  of  European  buildings  which 
could  be  reproduced  or  "adapted"  to  Ameri- 
can use.  Certainly  they  have  laid  violent 
hands  on  whatever  has  pleased  them  there  and 
reproduced  it  here  without  preface  or  apology, 
and  without,  in  many  cases,  a  sense  of  pro- 
priety or  a  particle  of  humor.  They  are  not 
able  to  see  the  grotesque  in  a  Roman  arch 
changed  into  a  clearing-house,  or  a  Veronese 
council-hall  made  to  do  service  as  a  printing- 
shop,  or  a  Greek  temple  turned  into  a  bull-and- 
bear  pit  where  brokers  may  roar  the  prices  of 
their  stocks.  What  sense  of  fitness  is  there 
in  a  dry-goods  store  that  imitates  a  Moorish 
palace,  or  a  railway  station  that  resembles  a 
temple  of  justice,  or  an  apartment-house  that 
looks  like  the  square  tower  of  an  English  ca- 
thedral ?  In  what  way  do  such  things  repre- 
sent American  life,  or  stand  for  American  art, 
134 


ART  APPRECIATION 

or  best  subserve  an  American  purpose  ?  New 
York,  to  go  no  farther  in  the  country,  is  filled 
with  barbarities  of  taste,  atrocities  of  style,  that 
have  no  sanity  in  them.  Many  of  them  are,  to 
be  sure,  blatant  advertisements  of  business 
ventures  in  which  the  architects  have  not  had 
their  own  way;  but  many  of  them  are  archi- 
tectural attempts  to  graft  the  old  on  the  new, 
and  are  mere  caterings  to  the  taste  for  foreign 
art. 

It  is  astonishing  the  things  that  are  done  in 
the  name  of  French  or  Italian  or  Greek  archi- 
tecture or  under  the  guise  of  a  Renaissance  or 
Gothic  or  Classic  period.  Again,  what  has  a 
Riccardi  palace  to  do  with  the  requirements  of 
a  company  of  silverware  merchants  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  or  an  ancient  chateau  of  France  with 
a  dwelling-house  for  Americans  on  the  same 
curb  line?  Something  "very  old,"  or  its 
equivalent  in  style,  seems  required.  So  fond 
are  we  of  antiquity  that  we  even  go  back  and 
borrow  from  the  art  of  our  own  colonial  pe- 
riod. And,  of  course,  we  reproduce  its  limi- 
tations and  petty  mannerisms.  This  is  partic- 
ularly true  of  dwelling-houses,  in  town  or  out 
of  it.  If  it  is  a  brick  house  that  is  to  be  con- 
structed, then  the  architect  has  made  at  great 
135 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

expense  irregular,  badly  burnt,  two-by-four 
bricks,  he  designs  cramped  little  windows  with 
panes  the  size  of  one's  hand;  and  puts  in 
picturesque  foundation  stones,  undressed  and 
moss-grown,  gathered  from  the  neighboring 
counties.  He  has  not  enough  imagination  to 
know  that  the  colonial  builders  would  have 
been  delighted  had  their  machinery  been  able 
to  turn  out  a  smooth,  even,  eight-inch  brick 
and  clear,  large  plate-glass,  such  as  we  have 
to-day;  and  that  had  there  been  clean-dressed 
blocks  of  stone  at  hand  they  would  have  been 
glad  to  use  them  in  the  foundations.  They 
took  the  field  stones  because  they  were  cheaper 
and  required  no  carriage  to  their  destination. 
Recently  a  young  man,  who  was  declared  by 
his  friends  to  be  "a  person  of  taste,"  told  me 
of  his  worries  with  a  country  house  he  was 

building  at  G .     It  seems  that  the  old 

houses,  built  there  more  than  a  hundred  years 
ago,  had  sags  in  the  roof  about  the  gables,  and 
were  uneven  in  the  sky-lines.  He  wanted  his 
master-carpenter  to  repeat  those  crimps  in  the 
new  roof,  and  the  carpenter  was  such  a  savage 
that  he  wanted  to  build  the  roof  and  gable- 
lines  straight  and  true!  And  the  stupid  stone- 
mason wanted  to  rub  the  moss  and  lichens  ofif 
136 


ART   APPRECIATION 

of  his  carefully  selected  field  stones!  He  said 
nothing  about  his  pergola,  but  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  he  had  one  at  the  side  of  the 
house,  and  that  the  posts  were  monolithic 
columns  of  polished  granite  or  white  marble. 
The  pergolas  in  southern  Italy  being  built 
of  stone  rubble  and  coated  with  whitewash, 
because  of  the  lack  of  available  joists  and 
scantling,  it  is  quite  natural  that  the  American 
should  seek  to  outdo  the  Italian  by  having 
solid  cylinders  of  stone  put  in  to  uphold  a — 
vine! 

People  with  such  refined  feeling  for  the 
flavor  of  antiquity  can  have  but  slight  sym- 
pathy with  modern  things.  Our  recent  coun- 
try houses,  of  which  we  have  some  reason  to 
be  proud,  not  only  because  they  are  largely  of 
our  own  invention,  but  because  they  are  sub- 
stantial, serviceable,  and  appropriate,  are  not 
to  their  taste.  In  reality  the  only  thing  wrong 
with  many  of  them  is  that  they  are  in  good 
repair.  A  hundred  or  more  years  hence,  when 
the  walls  are  ''out  of  plumb"  and  the  roofs 
leak,  there  will  be  plenty  of  Bunthornes  to 
grow  lachrymose  over  them.  And  in  the  city 
what  word  of  good  report  can  one  find  for  our 
only  original  architectural  creation,  the  sky- 
137 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

scraper  ?  Everybody  talks  sentimentally  about 
the  City  Hall  and  Old  Trinity,  and  between 
gulps  of  emotion  protests  the  beauty  of 
Fraunce's  Tavern  and  the  romance  of  the 
cheese-box  Aquarium.  Even  such  palpable 
borrowings  from  Europe  as  the  new  Public 
Library,  or  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Sta- 
tion, are  acclaimed  with  enthusiasm  as  oases  in 
the  desert  of  steel,  stone,  and  brick.  But  who 
acclaims  or  declaims  anything  favorable  to  the 
sky-scraper  ?  Almost  every  one  flings  his  epi- 
thet at  it  because  it  is  big  and  new,  and  not 
like  anything  else  ever  known  in  the  history  of 
architecture. 

But  what  is  wrong  with  the  sky-scraper? 
Has  it  any  vice  save  its  novelty,  its  originality  ? 
It  was  started  as  an  expedient  to  utilize  valu- 
able ground  in  the  congested  parts  of  cities,  to 
increase  floor  space  by  increasing  the  height  of 
the  building,  also  to  increase  revenue  and  thus 
meet  tax  assessments  and  interest  upon  in- 
vested capital.  In  this  it  was  successful;  and 
being  put  forth  honestly  and  without  pretence 
as  a  business  necessity,  its  designers  builded 
better  than  they  knew.  For,  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously, they  developed  a  new  building  prin- 
ciple and,  I  am  disposed  to  think,  a  new  style 
138 


ART  APPRECIATION 

of  architecture.  The  Egyptian  and  the  Greek 
had  used  the  upright  and  the  cross-piece  as  a 
child  builds  a  block  house.  The  Roman  had 
bevelled  the  blocks  and  keyed  them  in  an  arch ; 
the  Goth  had  raised  them  in  pointed  windows 
and  roofs,  and  sustained  the  outward-pushing 
walls  by  piles  of  buttressed  blocks.  None  of 
them  had  used  anything  that  held  the  blocks 
together  or  kept  the  building  from  falling  apart 
by  settlings  of  the  foundations.  They  were  all 
of  them  more  or  less  agglomerations  of  loose 
stones.  The  sky-scraper  is  the  first  structure 
wherein  steel  is  used  and  the  frame  of  up- 
rights and  cross-beams  is  riveted  together  by 
girders  and  stays  so  that  it  cannot  get  away 
or  settle  or  warp.  The  structure  is  brought 
together  as  a  solid  whole  and  is  a  self-sup- 
porting, practically  indestructible  unit.  The 
outside  walls  of  brick  or  stone  are  merely 
weather  shields  and  support  nothing.  Every- 
thing is  carried  by  the  steel  frame,  and  all  the 
strains  upon  the  frame  are  so  adjusted  that 
they  carry  downward  through  the  steel  pillars 
and  are  finally  brought  to  bear  upon  the  stone 
foundations. 

Here  is  not  only  new  construction  but  a  new 
building  principle.     And  why  not  also  a  new 
139 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

architectural  style  ?  To  decry  it  because  it  is 
neither  classic  nor  romantic,  nor  any  other 
style  that  ever  was,  is  to  repeat  the  denuncia- 
tion of  innovation  that  has  always  been  since 
the  world  began.  Wherein  or  how  is  it  "  hid- 
eous"— to  quote  the  common  expression? 
Thirty  years  ago  they  used  the  same  word  in 
connection  with  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  But 
both  the  bridge  and  the  tall  building  are  sane 
in  proportion,  in  composition,  in  sky-lines,  in 
use.  Moreover,  they  are  the  most  picturesque 
features  of  the  new  city,  and  will  doubtless  be 
so  regarded  by  the  coming  generation.  More 
than  once  in  our  nation-building  the  useful  in- 
ventions of  the  pioneers  have  been  applauded 
as  art  by  their  grandchildren.  Just  now  we 
are  perhaps  too  close  to  the  sky-scraper  to  see 
anything  but  its  commercialism.  With  the 
fever  of  the  antique  burning  in  our  brain  we 
are  in  no  state  to  appreciate  anything  so  dis- 
tinctly modern,  original,  and  useful.  Even 
the  architects  of  the  steel  structures  were  at 
first  disposed  to  be  apologetic  and  to  plan  the 
new  buildings  on  the  platform-column-and- 
portico  principle  of  the  antique.  Greek  tem- 
ples, Venetian  palaces,  and  Gothic  town-halls 
were  elongated,  pulled  out  into  twenty  stories, 
140 


ART  APPRECIATION 

and  made  to  resemble  in  external  features  some 
of  the  memorable  buildings  of  Europe.  But 
this  was  a  mistaken  idea,  and  not  until  the 
architects  began  with  something  distinctly  their 
own — a  space-saving  building  with  upright 
walls,  neither  receding  nor  advancing  from  the 
curb  line — was  the  sky-scraper  a  success.  And 
success  it  must  be  written  down — the  one 
architectural  triumph  of  our  people  of  which 
the  future  will  be  proud.  And  that,  not  only 
because  it  is  our  own,  but  because  it  is  char- 
acteristic art  that  justifies  itself  in  use  and 
purpose. 

It  is  not,  however,  with  the  sky-scraper,  the 
bridge,  the  factory,  or  the  farm  that  popular 
notions  about  art  are  usually  concerned.  Such 
distinctly  American  features  are  accounted 
ugly,  possibly  because  they  are  very  plain  and 
very  necessary.  Art  with  us,  it  seems,  is  con- 
sidered a  matter  of  the  house  and  the  apart- 
ment, of  the  museum  and  the  gallery,  of  the 
park  and  the  plaza — something  that  belongs  to 
social,  municipal,  or  academic  life  and  has 
little  to  do  with  use.  At  least  this  notion 
seems  apparent  in  the  furnishing  of  the  aver- 
age dwelling,  in  town  or  out  of  it.  Everything 
seems  planned  more  for  looks  than  for  service. 
141 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

The  furniture  is  often  imported  and,  whether 
genuine  or  forged,  is  usually  too  weak  in  the 
legs  to  bear  any  weight;  the  rugs,  imported 
again,  are  of  a  quality  too  precious  to  be  trod 
upon;  the  musical  instruments  are  hung  on 
the  wall  and  cannot  be  used;  the  undefiled 
porcelains  are  in  glass  cases  and  never  hold 
anything;  the  books,  glass-cased  again,  are  all 
beautifully  bound  but  not  to  be  read;  the  por- 
tieres on  the  doors,  the  tapestries  on  the  walls, 
that  have  cost  a  fortune,  are  not  even  useful 
because  inappropriate  and  meaningless  in  such 
surroundings;  and  the  $129,000  Turner  or  the 
$125,000  Hals  are  not  decorative  for  they  make 
spots  on  the  tapestries  and  fail  to  keep  their 
places. 

What  else  could  be  expected  1  None  of  these 
things  are  ours,  or  represent  us,  or  have 
anything  in  common  with  us  but  a  quarrel. 
What  pertinence  has  a  Rembrandt  portrait 
in  the  dining-room  of  a  New  York  stock- 
broker or  a  carved  Renaissance  door-way  or 
mantel-piece  in  the  drawing-room  of  a  Pitts- 
burg steel  manufacturer?  When  the  Vene- 
tians wanted  porphyry  columns  for  San  Marco 
they  took  them  from  the  buildings  in  and 
about  Constantinople  because  they  had  no 
142 


ART  APPRECIATION 

stone  of  their  own,  and  bringing  stone  from  the 
Alps  across  the  marshes  was  a  mighty  labor. 
They  took  by  chance  more  columns  than  they 
needed  and  the  ones  left  over  were  placed  in 
front  of  the  main  facade  of  San  Marco  to  get 
rid  of  them.  But  what  excuse  or  rhyme  or 
reason  is  there  for  the  American  following  of 
that  Venetian  idiosyncrasy,  in  standing  loose 
columns  of  old  stone  or  gilded  wood  around  the 
fireplace  of  a  Fifth  Avenue  drawing-room? 
It  was  to  be  expected  of  a  foolish  jackdaw 
that  he  should  despise  his  own  plumage  and 
seek  to  enliven  it  by  adding  a  peacock's 
feather  to  his  tail;  but  how  does  an  intelli- 
gent people  permit  itself  such  a  patent  ab- 
surdity ? 

And  the  unending  discussion  and  gossip 
about  Renaissance  art!  It  spreads  from  the 
antique  shops  and  the  dealer's  store  to  the 
drawing-room  and  the  dinner- table;  it  floats 
in  from  the  museum  and  the  lecture  platform, 
it  breaks  out  in  the  daily  press  and  the 
monthly  magazines,  and  it  is  served  up  at  the 
clubs  and  the  theatres.  Critics  and  connois- 
seurs give  appreciations  of  it  before  pink-tea 
audiences,  museums  give  exhibitions  of  it, 
auction-rooms  and  dealers'  shops  have  sales  of 
143 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

it.  Every  one  is  afraid  some  fine  shade  of  it 
will  get  away  unseen  or  unfelt.  In  the  summer 
season  thousands  of  our  people  study  it  in  the 
Vatican,  absorb  it  in  the  churches,  and  chase  it 
through  the  galleries  of  Italy.  What  eyes  they 
have  for  old  palaces  with  towers  askew,  for 
sagging  bridges  and  wharves,  for  quaint  door- 
knockers and  picturesque  chimney-pots!  They 
revere  antiquity  and  have  a  standing  quarrel 
with  the  native  because  he  does  not  do  like- 
wise. The  Roman  who  wishes  to  improve  the 
city  where  he  lives  and  objects  to  its  being  re- 
garded as  a  mere  museum  and  he  himself  as  a 
mummy  in  a  glass  case  is  said  to  be  a  savage, 
a  descendant  of  the  old  invading  Goths;  the 
Venetian  who  wants  a  little  more  rapid  transit 
than  a  gondola  affords,  and  puts  a  motor  boat 
on  the  Grand  Canal,  is  an  unspeakable  de- 
generate. What  better  could  either  or  any  of 
them  do  than  live  for  the  past?  What  right 
has  Italy  with  such  a  history  to  be  modern? 
Was  there  ever  before  such  a  pother  about 
art — and  most  of  it  about  somebody  else's  art  ? 
One  hears  the  name  of  Corot  twenty  times  to 
Homer  Martin's  once,  of  Rembrandt  fifty  times 
to  Winslow  Homer's  once,  of  Frans  Hals  a 
hundred  times  to  Gilbert  Stuart's  once.  Great 
144 


ART  APPRECIATION 

names,  and  great  art  that  of  Corot,  Rembrandt, 
and  Hals;  but  they  are  not  our  names,  nor  our 
people,  nor  our  art.  They  belong  in  our  mu- 
seums, but  not  in  our  homes  or  in  our  lives. 
They  are  not  only  foreign  to  our  time  and  peo- 
ple but  in  their  influence  they  tend  to  choke 
out  contemporary  originality.  It  is  impossi- 
ble for  all  this  talk  about  ancient  art  to  be  in 
the  air  without  touching  and  affecting  any 
and  every  endeavor.  The  furniture  manu- 
facturer will  eventually  give  the  public  what 
it  wants.  If  the  demand  is  for  colonial,  or 
Louis  Seize,  or  old  Spanish  chairs  and  tables 
he  will  produce  them.  The  tapestry  man  will 
imitate  the  Gobelins,  the  rug  man  the  Daghes- 
tan  patterns,  the  glass  man  will  mould  or  blow 
you  Bohemian  or  old  Venetian  ware  to  order. 
English  quartered  oak  from  Michigan,  Flor- 
entine hangings  from  Paterson,  Italian  mar- 
bles from  Vermont,  Renaissance  bronzes  from 
Boston — you  can  have  any  style  you  please, 
except  the  American.  Step  into  a  wall-paper 
establishment,  a  silk  store,  a  millinery  shop, 
or  a  tailoring  concern,  and  immediately  there 
is  talk  about  the  latest  imported  styles  of  goods. 
Try  the  ofi&ce  of  an  architect,  a  silversmith,  or 
a  decorator  and  you  will  meet  with  the  same 
145 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

thing.     The  only  originality  apparent  is  in 
persistent  imitation. 

And  how  or  why  should  the  native  painter  be 
supposed  bullet-proof  against  such  influences  ? 
If  all  the  world  is  talking  about  the  style  of 
Mauve  or  Manet,  what  is  the  use  of  thrusting 
forward  the  style  of  Smith  or  Brown?  Un- 
consciously, no  doubt,  the  Smiths  and  Browns 
drift  into  the  fashionable  way  of  doing  things. 
At  one  time,  perhaps,  the  Barbizon  painters 
are  in  the  ascendant.  The  collectors  buy 
them,  the  museums  exhibit  them,  every  one 
talks  about  them.  P^-esently  the  yearly  ex- 
hibitions take  on  a  Barbizon  look.  There  are 
landscapes  like  those  of  Rousseau  and  Duprd, 
cattle  and  sheep  like  those  of  Troyon,  labor- 
ers and  mill-hands  like  the  peasants  of  Millet. 
In  a  few  years  fashion  has  changed  and  Monet 
and  plein  air  are  the  vogue.  Directly  the  ex- 
hibition walls  grow  vivid  with  primary  colors 
applied  in  points  and  spots.  Every  other  pict- 
ure is  a  strain  after  sunlight,  and  every  other 
palette  is  keyed  up  with  prismatic  hues.  Opal- 
escent air,  blue  shadows,  purple  trees,  even  lilac 
cows — the  exaggerations  of  impressionism — 
are  everywhere  in  evidence.  A  few  years  more 
and  fashion  has  again  shifted,  and  now  it  fan- 
146 


ART  APPRECIATION 

cies  something  just  the  opposite  of  Monetism. 
It  likes  the  smoky  atmosphere  of  Carriere  and 
goes  mad  over  the  subtle  hues  of  Whistler. 
Once  more  the  new  crop  of  Smiths  and  Browns 
responds  by  pitching  its  pictures  in  a  dull  key 
of  light;  and  the  exhibition  walls  grow  dark 
with  brown-fiddle  and  old  gray  tones  of  color, 
with  ''notes"  and  '^ nocturnes"  and  "arrange- 
ments," with  sketches  and  studies  and  unfin- 
ished pictures. 

The  painters  follow  the  eccentricities  of 
Monet  and  Whistler,  forgetting  or  overlook- 
ing their  decided  merits,  and  the  sculptors  pay 
the  same  doubtful  compliment  of  imitation  to 
Rodin.  At  one  time  it  was  Dubois  or  Fal- 
guiere  that  held  their  allegiance,  but  now  it  is 
Rodin — Rodin,  a  genius  but  for  his  limita- 
tions. Of  course  the  limitations  are  the  feat- 
ures that  his  American  followers  love  the  best 
and  try  the  hardest  to  reproduce.  The  most 
marked  of  these  is  his  apparent  inability  to 
finish  anything,  to  group  anything,  to  compose 
anything.  He  does  scraps  and  bits  that  give 
hints  of  power,  and  promises  of  great  things 
that  are  not  fulfilled.  His  sketch  in  stone — a 
limitation  imposed  originally  upon  Michael 
Angelo — is  the  very  thing  his  followers  would 
147 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

accept.  The  result  is  the  half-finished  marble 
in  the  exhibitions — a  back  heaving  out  of  the 
block,  a  head  coming  out  of  a  formless  body, 
a  leg  struggling  with  its  matrix  of  stone.  Man- 
nerisms again.  Even  the  students  in  the  art 
schools  are  taught  to  admire  them  in  the  great 
sculptures  and  painters,  or  at  least  the  manner- 
ism or  the  method  of  an  old  master  is  about 
the  only  thing  the  student  succeeds  in  copy- 
ing, which  is  in  effect  the  same  thing.  Any 
method  seems  better  worth  following  than  our 
own. 

By  that  I  mean  that  though  there  is  much 
talk  in  the  leagues  and  schools  about  "orig- 
inality" and  "self-assertion"  and  "individual 
view"  there  is  too  little  practical  demonstra- 
tion of  it.  The  antique  class  draws  from  the 
cast — a  cast  usually  of  a  "classic"  Greek  or 
Roman,  attitudinized  on  one  leg  or  with  a  hip 
thrown  up  in  graceful  self-consciousness — and 
thereby  gains  the  knowledge  of  how  to  pose 
the  model  after  the  Greek  manner.  The 
painting  class  works  from  the  nude  model — 
posed  again,  perhaps,  as  Ajax  defying  the 
lightning — which  possibly  enables  it  to  com- 
prehend the  living  people  of  our  day  as  they 
appear  clothed  and  in  their  right  mind.  As 
148 


ART  APPRECIATION 

far  removed  from  reality  as  such  examples  are, 
they  might  not  be  ineffective  if  the  classes  were 
actually  made  to  draw,  and  to  keep  on  draw- 
ing. That  is  the  grammar  of  painting  and 
should  be  learned  by  heart  down  to  the  slight- 
est inflection  or  exception.  But  unfortunately 
the  method  pursued  soon  puts  a  broad  brush 
in  the  student's  hand  instead  of  a  piece  of  coal 
and  he  is  told  to  paint — paint  like  Frans  Hals 
or  Velasquez !  Here  is  the  foreign  model  once 
more.  And  such  a  model!  To  ask  an  ex- 
ceedingly minor  poet  to  write  like  Shakespeare 
or  Homer,  or  a  college  freshman  to  speak  like 
Burke  or  Daniel  Webster,  would  not  be  more 
absurd.  Velasquez  drew  and  painted  for  many 
years  with  a  minute  pencil  and  a  tight  brush, 
and  it  was  just  because  he  did  so  that  he  was 
afterward  able  to  draw  easily  with  a  loose 
brush;  but  the  modern  student  need  not  go 
through  that  drudgery.  He  can  begin  where 
Velasquez  left  off.  Frans  Hals  never  could 
draw  as  well  as  Velasquez,  never  had  his  calm 
poise  and  certain  hand;  but  he  could  slash 
about  on  canvas  with  a  large  brush  some- 
times with  great  effect  and  sometimes  with  a 
wealth  of  bad  drawing  quite  astonishing.  The 
bad  drawing  of  draperies  and  extremities,  and 
149 


WHAT   IS  ART? 

the  heaping  up  occasionally  of  ineffectual 
paint  being  Hals  mannerisms,  there  is  no 
reason  why  the  student  should  not  acquire 
them.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  does.  The 
master  who  presides  applauds  Hals's  "breadth 
of  handling"  as  he  does  "the  certain  touch" 
of  Velasquez;  but  he  will  not  see  that  these 
qualities  are  as  the  rod  of  Aaron  that  turns 
into  a  serpent  in  the  hands  of  the  uninspired. 
He  could  not  pick  out  better  painters  or  worse 
models  for  imitation  than  those  two  men. 

So  it  is  that  the  student  in  the  school  does 
not  learn  to  draw  or  paint  in  the  most  effective 
or  practical  way.  It  is  only  after  years  of  for- 
getting what  he  learned  there  that  perhaps  he 
finally,  through  severe  work,  gets  on  his  feet 
and  realizes  that  Hals  and  Velasquez  are  not 
for  him,  that  he  is  an  American  of  the  West, 
a  modern  of  the  moderns,  and  that  he  is  to 
give  some  expression  of  himself,  his  time,  and 
his  people  in  his  art  if  it  is  to  be  vital  or  sig- 
nificant in  any  way.  What  have  Sargent  or 
Whistler  or  John  La  Farge  to  do  with  Velas- 
quez or  Manet  or  Delacroix?  They  had  to 
forget  all  that  before  they  became  themselves. 
The  student  of  sculpture  is  in  the  same  condi- 
tion. He  models  figures  like  Rodin's  or  groups 
150 


ART  APPRECIATION 

like  Dalou's,  but  it  takes  him  years  before  he 
throws  such  influences  behind  him  and  at  last 
produces  a  Sherman  or  a  Lincoln.  Even  the 
Beaux-Arts  architect  has  been  known  to  for- 
get and  to  forsake 

" — his  low-vaulted  past 
And  let  each  new  temple  nobler  than  the  last 
Shut  him  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast." 

He  has  risen  to  originality  more  than  once, 
not  by  adapting  this  or  that  style,  but  by  dis- 
carding them  all  and  producing  the  need  of 
the  hour  with  the  sincerity  of  the  hour.  Every 
time  he  has  done  so  he  has  built  not  only  a 
monument  for  his  country  but  for  himself. 

From  which  is  it  to  be  inferred  that  we  have 
in  America  native  art  in  the  various  branches  ? 
Certainly.  But  not  by  virtue  of  foreign  ex- 
ample or  imitation  or  importation.  Rather  in 
spite  of  that.  There  are  self-assertive  indi- 
viduals still  with  us  who  insist  upon  seeing, 
thinking,  and  working  in  their  own  way;  and 
they  are  carrying  on  the  American  tradition  of 
self-reliance.  They  do  not  make  a  large  body, 
but  their  work  has  been  well  received  and  has 
met  with  substantial  success.  Indeed,  the  best 
of  American  art  is  very  good,  and  when  the 
imitative  part  of  it  is  bad  it  is,  I  believe,  largely 
151 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

because  it  is  not  American.  Any  expression 
in  art  which  is  but  an  echo  of  another  art 
lacks  impulse  and  spontaneity.  It  cannot  be 
vital  nor  can  it  be  lasting,  though  it  may 
have  a  vogue  for  a  time  and  be  acclaimed  in 
public  places.  Everything  comes  out  of  the 
soil,  even  art;  and  that  art  which  has  sprung 
directly  from  American  soil,  though  it  may 
have  as  yet  no  startling  record  in  the  auction- 
rooms  nor  silly  chatter  in  the  drawing-rooms, 
is  nevertheless  good  art.  And  its  truth  and 
candor  shall  some  day  place  it  in  the  ascen- 
dant. 

But  there  is  no  need  to  lament  the  limited 
appreciation  of  American  art.  Nor  was  that 
my  meaning.  Rather  was  it  the  intention  to 
point  out  that  our  foreign  importations,  and 
our  borrowings  from  hither  and  yon,  will  never 
produce  art  with  us  nor  of  themselves  make  us 
an  artistic  people.  The  peacock's  feather  in 
the  jackdaw's  tail  did  not  make  him  artistic; 
it  made  him  ridiculous.  Our  Greek  and 
Roman  temples  as  commercial  houses,  our 
French  chateaux  as  city  homes,  our  Rem- 
brandts  and  Botticellis  as  drawing-room  dec- 
oration, our  Burgundian  tapestries  and  Per- 
sian glass  and  Louis  Quinze  chairs  as  house- 
152 


ART  APPRECIATION 

hold  furniture  are  quite  as  absurd.  They  are 
palpable  misfits  and  out  of  place  except,  as  I 
have  said,  in  our  museums.  We  admire  such 
things,  and  not  without  reason.  They  are 
good  art,  most  excellent  art,  and  chiefly  be- 
cause when  produced  they  were  native  art. 
What  would  have  been  the  value  of  Rem- 
brandt had  he  been  a  follower  of  Raphael,  or 
of  Botticelli  had  he  trailed  after  Jan  van 
Eyck  ?  Had  the  Egyptians  imitated  the  Assy- 
rians or  the  modern  Persians  the  Japanese, 
should  we  to-day  be  praising  their  works  and 
adding  them  to  our  collections  with  such 
greedy  haste  ?  The  truth  is  we  admire  in  the 
older  art  and  artists  the  very  thing  we  lack  in 
ourselves — native  expression. 

We  shall  not  be  great  in  art  or  its  apprecia- 
tion, nor  shall  we  in  anywise  become  an  artistic 
people,  until  we  put  aside  our  foreign  baubles 
and  do  our  own  things,  with  our  own  materials, 
in  our  own  way.  We  may  drag  the  world  for 
antiquities  and  turn  our  house  and  cities  into 
museums,  but  in  the  end  we  shall  find  that 
collecting  is  one  thing  and  producing  quite 
another  thing.  Moreover,  the  inspiration  of 
a  nation's  art  never  yet  came  out  of  the  junk- 
shop.  It  comes  out  of  the  soil — the  time,  the 
153 


WHAT  IS  ART? 

place,  the  people,  and  their  ideals.  Ruskin 
insisted  that  the  deeds  of  a  nation  might  be 
great  through  good  fortune  and  its  words 
mighty  by  the  genius  of  a  few  of  its  children, 
but  its  art  only  by  the  general  gifts  and  com- 
mon sympathies  of  the  race.  And  his  insist- 
ence was  a  right  one.  We  shall  have  to  learn 
that  lesson  with  its  moral  of  self-reliance  before 
we  shall  rise  to  any  great  heights. 


154 


BOOKS  BY  JOHN  C  VAN  DYKE 

Professor  of  the   History  of  Art    in    Rutgers    College 
PUBLISHED  BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

The  Meaning  of 
Pictures 

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*<A  book  that  is  always  calm  and  cool  and  right,'' ^ 
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BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN   DYKE 


Art  for  Art's  Sake 

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With  24   reproductions  of  representative 
paintings.     lamo,    $1.50 

**  One  of  the  best  books  on  art  that  has  ever  been 
published  in  this  country." — Boston  Transcript, 

*'  We  consider  it  the  best  treatise  on  the  technic  of 
painting  for  general  readers." — The  Nation. 

'*  Mr.  Van  Dyke  is  very  good  reading  indeed,  and 
withal  remarkably  clear  and  precise  in  explaining  much 
that  shapes  itself  but  hazily  in  the  brain  of  those  interested 
in  art." — London  Spectator, 

**  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  a  book  in  English  from 
which  one  can  learn  more  of  what  pictures  are  and  why 
they  are  admired." — Dr.  Talcott  Williams. 

"Has  all  the  recommendations  that  are  to  be  looked 
for  in  essays  of  the  kind.  They  take  a  broad  survey, 
they  deal  with  the  points  that  it  is  worth  while  to  know 
about,  they  are  perfectly  lucid,  and  they  are  very  charm- 
ing in  their  literary  art." — New  York  Sun. 

*•  Temperate  and  appreciative." — Atlantic  Monthly. 

**  Written  in  an  easy,  entertaining  style." 

— New  York  Tribune. 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


Studies  in  Pictures 

An  Introduction  to  the 
Famous  Galleries 

With  40  Illustrations.     12mo,   $1.25  net 

"  Professor  Van  Dyke  is  a  helpful  cicerone,  for  he 
does  not  overpower  the  reader  with  his  theories,  or  force 
upon  him  his  tastes,  or  crush  him  with  the  weight  of  his 
learning,  but  talks  clearly  and  sensibly  about  what  pic- 
tures are  painted  for  and  how  we  can  get  the  most  out 
of  them." — T^e  Independent. 

''It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  better  or  more  ac- 
complished guide  in  gaining  a  comprehension  of  the 
principles  of  appreciation  as  applied  to  painting." 

— The  Press  (Philadelphia). 

"Not  only  useful  to  the  unsophisticated,  to  whom  it 
is  admirably  adapted,  but  valuable  to  those  who  have  a 
tendency  to  lose  themselves  in  technicalities." 

— New  York  Times. 

"Mr  Van  Dyke  will  help  the  student  to  understand 
how  pictures  have  been  made  and  how  they  have  been 
brought  together  in  the  great  galleries ;  he  will  show  how 
to  get  at  the  points  of  view  held  by  the  masters,  and  how, 
in  short,  to  use  the  technique  of  art-study." 

— New  York  Tribune. 

"Much  useful  information  and  suggestive  thought 
in  an  informal  little  volume. " — hiternational  Studio. 

"Professor  Van  Dyke  writes  with  his  usual  cool 
good  sense." — New  York  Evening  Post. 

"An   admirable   introduction   to  travel  or   study." 
»  — The  Congregationalist. 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


Nature  for  Its 
Own  Sake 

First  Studies  in  Natural  Appearances 

i2mo,  $1.50 

'*  No  one  can  read  it  without  having  his  knowledge 

of  nature  enlarged,  his  curiosity  quickened,  and  his  sen- 
sitiveness to  the  beauty  that  is  all  about  him  in  the  world 
increased  and  stimulated." — Chicago  Tribune. 

**  He  writes  clearly  and  simply  and  indulges  in  little 
rhetoric  or  false  sentiment.  His  *  first  studies,'  therefore, 
will  probably  reveal  to  many  people  many  things  of 
which  they  were  unaware." — The  Nation. 

**A  series  of  interesting  and  distinctly  original  essays." 
— Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

**A  book  of  uncommon  merit,  first,  in  its  point  of 
view,  and,  second,  in  the  peculiar  skill  with  which  the 
subject  of  nature  is  handled." — Washington  Post. 

**  A  book  on  nature  widely  different  from  anything 
yet  written,  and  fresh,  suggestive,  and  delightful." 

— New  York  Times. 

"A  book  for  all  nature  lovers.  ...  A  most 
delightful  vade  mecum.'*'' 

— Bliss  Carman  in  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 


BY   PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


The    Desert 

Further  Studies  in  Natural 
Appearances 

With  frontispiece.    i2mo,  $1.25  net 

**The  reader  who  once  submits  to  its  spell  will  hardly- 
lay  it  aside  until  the  last  page  is  turned.** 

— The  Spectator  (London). 

**This  charming  volume  comes  as  strong  wine  indeed 
after  the  tepid  rose-water  of  books  dealing  with  snails  and 
daffodils  in  suburban  gardens.  Mr.  Van  Dyke  unques- 
tionably knows  his  desert;  he  has  the  true  wanderer's  eye 
for  its  essential  fascination." — The  Atheneeum  (London). 

"No  virgin  rush  of  young  impressions,  but  an  adult 
mingling  of  vision  and  criticism  in  a  style  that  engages 
without  startling  the  attention." — London  Academy. 

"Strange  and  curious  reading,  this  book  of  the  desert, 
and  has  all  the  fascination  of  things  unaccustomed.'* 

— New  York  Tribune, 

"The  writer's  personality  is  carefully  subordinated, 
but  one  cannot  help  feeling  it  strongly;  that  of  a  man 
more  sensitive  to  color  than  to  form,  enthusiastic,  but  with 
a  stem  hand  on  his  own  pulse.** — Atlantic  Monthly, 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


The  Opal  Sea 

Continued  Studies  in  Impressions  and  Appearances 

With  Frontispiece.      12mo,  $1.25  net 

"Prof.  Van  Dyke  takes  his  reader's  imagination  cap- 
tive with  prose  in  which  we  feel  the  sea's  own  glamour 
of  beauty  and  movement  and  mystery,  its  glory  of  color 
and  power." — New  York  Tribune. 

"Pleasure  awaits  the  reader  of  'The  Opal  Sea.'" 
— Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

"The  history,  the  poetry,  the  science,  and  the  end- 
less aspects  of  the  sea  are  given  in  a  style  that  will  charm 
all  lovers  of  the  ocean." — The  Independent. 

"Will  be  read  for  the  pleasure  which  the  work  of  a 
skillful  observer  wielding  a  practised  pen  is  bound  to 
give;  and  the  pleasure  will  be  great.  Prof.  Van  Dyke 
is  a  master  of  the  art  of  'seascape'  who  need  fear  no 
comparison." — The  Spectator  (London). 

"No  English  writer,  and  no  other  writer  except 
Michelet,  has  done  as  much  as  Mr.  Van  Dyke  to  arrange 
attractively  what  has  been  in  the  course  of  ages  learned 
about  the  sea." — The  World  (London). 

"We  strongly  approve  the  combination  of  gifts  which 
represent  Prof.  Van  Dyke's  literary  equipment  and  wish 
to  commend  his  books  most  cordially  to  intelligent 
readers." — The  Standard  (London). 

"Lovers  of  the  sea  and  lovers  of  nature  generally  will 
find  much  to  interest  them  in  this  book,  and  here  and 
there  passages  that  may  enthrall  them." 

— Literary  World  (London). 

"Prof.  Van  Dyke's  being  at  heart  a  poet  of  the  sea 
is  proved  in  his  fine  raptures  on  well-nigh  everything  of 
the  deep." — Daily  Chronicle  (Lo7idon). 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


The  Money  God 

Chapters  of  Heresy  and  Dissent 
Concerning  Business  Methods 
and  Mercenary  Ideals  in 
American  Life. 


"A  tremendous  indictment  of  the  degrading  materialism 
now  menacing  both  democracy  and  religion,  as  such  it  should 
be  read  by  all  who  have  at  heart  the  need  of  a  moral  revival." 

—The  Outlook. 

"  It  is  a  strong  book,  from  a  strenuous  mind,  on  a  neglected 
and  forgotten  phase  of  modern  society." 

— Boston  Advertiser. 

"  The  book  is  written  in  Mr.  Van  Dyke's  usual  scholarly 
and  fascinating  way,  and  it  should  make  itself  felt  as  an  appeal 
for  a  return  to  moral  standards  in  public  and  private  and 
financial  life." — Philadelphia  Record. 

"  As  an  economic  Philippic  the  book  goes  to  the  head  of  the 
class.  It  would  be  well  to  add  it  as  a  text-book  in  the  busi- 
ness courses  of  our  schools  and  colleges." 

— Springfield  Union. 

"  It  is  stimulating,  frank,  and  often  startling." 

— Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 


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